In March, three Fort Lauderdale cops were fired and another one resigned after they were busted exchanging text messages in which they constantly used the word “nigger” and passed around a racist video about Barack Obama featuring images of dogs attacking black people.
There have also been recent scandals involving cops sending one another racist, sexist, or homophobic emails and texts in Ferguson, Missouri; San Francisco; Edison, New Jersey; Seattle; Baton Rouge, Louisiana; and even Casselberry, Florida.
In Miami Beach, two ranking officers sent about 230 emails that contained racist and sexist jokes and pornography between 2010 to 2012, according to Police Chief Dan Oates. A former police captain who had been demoted to lieutenant was fired, and a major retired before the investigation was made public.Black people have become so desensitized to the racist attitudes of police officers that no one gives a fuck until cops kill one of us.
tweet this
Miami-Dade State Attorney Katherine Fernandez Rundle is combing through more than 150 criminal cases of black suspects arrested by the cops who passed around the vile emails. “Our job and our commitment is to ensure that we will do everything that we can to make sure that we do not prosecute cases that have been tainted by racial prejudice and racial insensitivity,” Fernandez Rundle said.
She should also reopen her investigation into the 2011 Memorial Day shooting of Raymond Herisse, who had refused cops’ orders to stop his car. Eight Miami Beach cops, as well as officers from the Hialeah Police Department, fired more than 100 rounds at Herisse, killing [him?] and wounding several bystanders. Fernandez Rundle recently decided not to file criminal charges against the officers involved.
The Miami Beach hate texts show the police department has an inherent bias problem. Even the city’s police union chief can’t hide his prejudice. Robert Jenkins, president of the Miami Beach Fraternal Order of Police, told the New York Times that the release of the racist emails was going to incite the predominantly African-American crowds that flock to Miami Beach for Memorial Day Weekend. “The people who are coming on Memorial Day are not police-friendly,” Jenkins said. “Sometimes we feel there’s an attitude of ‘them and us,’ and this is going to add to the tensions.”
Jenkins doesn’t need to worry. Black people have become so desensitized to the racist attitudes of police officers that no one gives a fuck until cops kill one of us. That’s the only time black lives matter to African-Americans.
Follow Luke on Twitter: @unclelukereal1.