At the San Francisco Chronicle, "Oakland police bombshells: Racist texts, latest chief steps down":
Oakland’s acting police chief Paul Figueroa stepped down Friday, becoming the third head of the Oakland Police Department to abruptly leave the top post in nine days, just as another bombshell dropped: A new internal investigation is under way, this time into racist text messages and emails shared among officers.Well, maybe they should bring back Jerry Brown for another term as Oakland mayor? I mean, why not? He's on his fourth term as California's governor and we've still got a long way to fall!
A visibly frustrated Mayor Libby Schaaf revealed the probe at a news conference Friday night that she began with a simple declaration: “I am here to run a police department, not a frat house.” With that, she disclosed that her city’s department, already engulfed in a sex scandal, was also being probed for racist communications that were “wholly inappropriate and not acceptable for anyone who wears the badge of the Oakland Police Department.”
The texts were sent by African American officers, Schaaf said. She would not give other details, including whether members of the police command staff were implicated, saying state law governing public release of police disciplinary matters prevented her from doing so.
Some of the officers being investigated were “engaging in hate speech,” and others were “tolerating it” by receiving offensive messages and not reporting them, Schaaf said. One text obtained by NBC news showed an image of a Ku Klux Klan member on a cereal box with the message, “Brad, I heard you got boxes of these in your cupboards.” Another text appeared to show the word, “N—.”
Still more.
And note this part:
Meanwhile, the mayor has set her sights on significantly changing the department — ending what she says is a disgusting frat culture, even as the department has been under federal oversight for the last 13 years.
“We have a department with almost no women, no LGBT people, and a dramatic underrepresentation of people of color,” Councilwoman Rebecca Kaplan told The Chronicle. She is pushing for reforms that would require Oakland’s police force to rethink its hiring and recruiting strategies.
Oh brother. I'm sure that "recruiting strategy" will really fix things right up. Might as well put out hiring feelers to Black Lives Matter activists!
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