A treasure trove of racist texts from the Antioch scum police

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Editor’s Note: This story contains racist and offensive language.

A scandal involving racist text messages sent between Antioch police officers caused chaos at a city council meeting on Tuesday. At one particularly intense moment, Mayor Lamar Thorpe stormed out of the council chamber following a heated interaction with a community member.

Thorpe, who is black, was the subject of at least one of many text messages revealed in a new report showing that city police department officers routinely used racial slurs when discussing black people and other minorities. In an exchange referencing Black Lives Matter protests in 2020, an officer reportedly sent a text message to his colleagues promising to buy a dinner of prime ribs for anyone who shoots Thorpe with non-lethal bullets from a 0.40 mm launcher.

Video of the Tuesday meeting showed nearly three dozen community members, many of whom were black, signed up to speak to the council. Several spoke of the brutality they said they had suffered at the hands of Antioch police and pointed to recently uncovered text messages as evidence that a culture of racism exists within the department.

It’s no surprise, said a resident. I’ve been talking about what’s been going on here since long before I moved here, 30 or 40 years ago. It’s disgusting, it’s despicable, and I wasn’t going to tolerate that.

Also present at the meeting were parents who said their children had been killed by the Antioch police. The mother and father of Angelo Quinto, a 30-year-old Filipino American who died in 2020 shortly after meeting with officers, spoke at the meeting to share their story.

When paramedics arrived at Quintos’ home where he had been held by police while going through a mental health crisis, they discovered that his face was purple in color, there was blood on his face and on the floor and was unresponsive, according to a report from NBC Bay. Area. He later died of his injuries at an area hospital.

Quintos’ mother spoke to the council through tears, while her father held her steady.

It is clear that this is a deeply rooted cultural and systemic issue in the Antioch Police Department and the city as a whole, she said. If someone is silent about it, he is complicit. They are part of the cover-up and part of the problem. My son Angelo is just one victim among many, and with these texts we know that the community is a much bigger victim.

At least two people had to be escorted out of a special Antioch City Council meeting on Tuesday evening. The meeting came in response to around two dozen Antioch police officers who are now being implicated over alleged racist and homophobic text messages. https://t.co/l1jQFdEblu pic.twitter.com/8CSoGAIem3

— ABC7 News (@abc7newsbayarea) April 12, 2023

The reunion began to get tense shortly after the Quintos family speech. A man, identified by the media as Sal Sbranti, took the podium. In his remarks, Sbranti insulted Thorpe and said he should be investigated to determine if he created a hostile work environment. He also suggested that Thorpes’ text messages be audited, to which Thorpe responded by encouraging such auditing. Sbranti ended his comments by suggesting that it takes several years to change the culture of a workplace and, despite recently published text messages, said he believed the city police department was change positively.

If you keep changing people, keep making excuses for bad work, you, our city council, [are to blame]Sbranti said, apparently referring to the multiple reshuffling of police department administrators in recent years.

Audience members scoffed as he walked away from the podium. Thorpe then began pointing fingers and yelling at Sbranti and the people he was with, accusing the man of whistle-blowing racism.

[Youre] an apologist for what is absolutely wrong with this city. Do you want to go out now? Let’s go, he said as other city council members tried to calm him down. I am tired of being attacked by these people apologizing for the racism that is rampant in this community. You are the problem. You are the problem.

Thorpe sat and remained silent as other council members tried to take control of the audience, who could be heard shouting at each other in the video. When the council adjourned for a break, Thorpe banged his gavel loudly before standing and walking out through a door behind the dais, slamming it shut as he passed.

The meeting resumed shortly after, with Thorpe back in his seat. He apologized for his outburst and said that revealing the texts had been particularly difficult for him because he had been referenced in them.

This is personal to me, and even though I wasn’t referenced there, all I heard was [N-word, N-word, N-word], he said, referring to the content of the texts. And that is personal to me. This should be personal to everyone in this room.

The texts, the details of which were first reported by Mercury News, are part of a larger investigation by the FBI and the Contra Costa County Prosecutors’ Office into current and former police officers in Antioch and Pittsburgh, who are doing under scrutiny for allegations of fraud, corruption, drug distribution and civil rights. violations related to the use of force. SFGATE asked to see a copy of the report, which was delivered to attorneys on Friday, but calls to the Contra Costa County prosecutors office were not returned.

The Mercury News reported that many of the posts contained racist or homophobic slurs, including calling black people gorillas, monkeys and water buffaloes. Officers also reportedly bragged about falsifying reports and using violence during arrests.

I was bummed the beast was so big because he didn’t bruise very quickly, an officer reportedly said in a text message to a police sergeant, referring to a black man who was arrested and charged with a crime. It never looks good on black guys, the sergeant reportedly replied. The other officer then replied: Just like jobs and responsibilities.

In another alleged exchange, an officer said a woman called him a racist cop. The president of the city’s police union, Sgt. Rick Hoffman, would have laughed and replied: Well, she has a point. The officer then replied, I never said I was offended, before another officer said the first officer was not racist, he just hated women.

In addition to using despicable and racist language with each other, officers also seemed to revel in flouting department procedure. In one particularly disturbing exchange detailed by the Mercury News, one officer messaged an officer in another city in which he said: Since we don’t have video, I sometimes say people made me full confessions when they did not. Classifies more easily. The city council voted to require Antioch police to wear body cameras in July 2021, more than a year after the alleged swap.

Several department officers are on leave while the FBI investigates, and at least two officers under investigation have resigned, according to Mercury News.

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