Racist, homophobic texts by San Francisco police trigger case reviews

[inanna]

Source: Los Angeles Times

March 17, 2015, 6:13 PM

A slew of racist and homophobic text messages exchanged between San Francisco police in a fellow officer’s corruption case has forced prosecutors and defense attorneys to review an estimated 1,000 criminal convictions for potential bias, officials announced Tuesday.

The messages were revealed in a motion by the U.S. attorney’s office opposing bail for Ian Furminger, a former San Francisco police officer who was recently sentenced to 41 months in prison on various corruption-related charges and was scheduled to surrender next month pending an appeal.

The texts, sent between 2011 and 2012, allegedly involved four other officers and denigrated minorities and gays.

“In order to ensure our criminal justice system is fair and equitable, my office is conducting an immediate assessment of every prosecution within the past ten years where these officers were involved,” said San Francisco Dist. Atty. George Gascon in a statement.

Read more: http://www.latimes.com/local/lanow/la-me-ln-racist-police-text-messages-review-20150317-story.html

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Sample of racist, homophobic text messages from S.F. officers

A slew of text mes­sages ex­changed between San Fran­cisco po­lice of­ficers that den­ig­rate black of­ficers and res­id­ents, ho­mo­sexu­als and Lati­nos, and out­lined in a fed­er­al court case, has forced au­thor­it­ies to re­view 1,000 crim­in­al con­vic­tions the of­ficers were in­volved in.

WARNING: This doc­u­ment con­tains of­fens­ive lan­guage and ra­cist and ho­mo­phobic con­tent.

Link: http://documents.latimes.com/sample-racist-homophobic-text-messages-former-sf-officer/

[Eric Stratton]

1. Bias is inherent in every Police Department....

....just as it is inherent in every "boy's club" organization from the local Pop Warner Jr. football teams through to every Police and Fire Department and Wall Street trading house.

In every case where the Department of Justice has found cause to investigate claims of Police Abuse and Civil Rights violations they have found systemic bias from East Coast to the liberal West Coast....every case....bias isn't the exception but it is the norm within these boys clubs.

Ferguson is just a shining example and, yet, the City Manager/Mayor and Police Chief endlessly claim that it is just a few individual cases. A couple of Email that were sent around. They claim that the DOJ simply made a big deal out of a couple of unfortunate events and every news organization gives these creations a forum for their defensive spin to minimize and dispute the bias in the city....without ever challenging their claims. For instance: if these "events" were the result of just a couple of "bad apples" then how did those couple bad apples piss-off so many citizens? How is it possible to account for so many claims by so many different citizens of discrimination? If there were so many good apples then why was there never anyone blowing the whistle to put an end to the bad behavior that violated the Civil Rights of so many people? .....etc....the action by San Francisco is EXACTLY the kind of response that every City should have to the lessons of Ferguson......because none have learned that lesson earlier.

[stillwaiting]

4. Great first post. Welcome to DU!

[MrModerate]

2. Any of these blue-clad *people* -- and I use the word advisedly . . .

Involved in the totally illegal bust of the guys filming a rap video at Hunters Point last week?

[Android3.14]

3. There seems to be a great many police departments

There seems to be a great many police departments that rely heavily on racist officers to fund their municipalities. No wonder the Lt. Governor in MO is upset. They are going to have to raise taxes at the same time the for-profit prison population will have to drop.

My hope is there is an extensive national investigation by the FBI into municipalities using poor people as their source for income.

[albino65]

5. I wonder

If this weren't necessary to the prosecution's case would they have released these e-mails? Prosecutor's and police are generally on the same page and cover for each other.