This Police Department Is So Bad, a Cop Reported It to Black Lives Matter

[Celerity]

https://www.thedailybeast.com/this-police-department-is-so-bad-a-cop-reported-it-to-black-lives-matter?ref=home



By September 2020, police officer Robert Black was at his wit’s end. Over his year of service in the department of Millersville, Tennessee, Black had allegedly been subjected to sexual harassment, including from a female officer who used a racist slur while grabbing his genitals. The police chief, whom Black suspected of harboring Ku Klux Klan ties, had allegedly made disparaging comments about Black’s biracial son. The assistant police chief was under investigation for allegedly assaulting his wife during a dispute over an alleged affair with a drug suspect. Through it all, management allegedly silenced officers’ complaints by instructing them to support the “thin blue line.” “Nobody would listen to what was going on up there,” Black told The Daily Beast. “Nobody cared.”

So Black made a fake Facebook profile, reached out to Black Lives Matter organizers, and blew the whistle on his department. Days later, he was fired. At least two other officers who allegedly clashed with management departed soon thereafter. In a new lawsuit, first reported by Nashville’s NewsChannel 5, Black and former Millersville Police sergeant Joshua Barnes describe a culture of harassment and intimidation in their former department. Both men cite a pattern of alleged racist behavior from the department’s leadership—directed at Barnes because he is Black, and at Black because he is white with a biracial son.

The lawsuit’s three defendants are Millersville Police chief Mark Palmer, assistant chief Dustin Carr, and the city of Millersville. Carr did not return The Daily Beast’s request for comment. Palmer stated that, although he would like to address the suit’s allegations, all comments must be directed through the city and its manager. Millersville’s city manager did not return requests for comment. The case is not the first time Palmer and the city have faced a lawsuit from within their ranks. In 2015, two men who had previously been Millersville’s only Black officers sued Palmer and the city, alleging racial discrimination.

In their lawsuit, which was dismissed with prejudice in 2016, both men claimed Palmer had told each of them that “I don’t like n-----s.” One of the former officers, Anthony Hayes, claimed Palmer took him on an unexplained visit to a former KKK leader’s home, where Hayes “was subjected to an extended conversation in the presence of KKK memorabilia.” Hayes also accused Palmer of placing a copy of a KKK magazine in Hayes’ locker, with a sticky note that read “this was left for you—don’t let your subscription run out.” In their response to the lawsuit, the city denied the allegations against Palmer. (The plaintiffs included in their lawsuit an email from the city manager stating that Palmer would be disciplined in the magazine incident.)

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