New Batch of Antioch Cops Texts Show How Racism and Policing Are Connected

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ANTIOCH The latest batch of text messages from Antioch police officers to be made public leave no doubt about the extent to which their self-proclaimed racism has seeped into their day-to-day law enforcement work, further underscoring the extent to which this Growing scandal has damaged the justice system. become.

A new document containing 128 pages of offensive communications between officers, filed in court on Friday, contains racism, homophobia and anti-Semitism, between officers exchanging words not after their shift, but during their work.

The messages make it clear that the officers took into account the running of the residents during their patrol. They discuss the targeting of blacks and Latinos, shed light on a black man shot dead hours earlier, call a Middle Eastern man a terrorist just minutes after arresting him, and refer to their own police chief, which is black, like a gorilla.

I’m already good at racial profiling, Officer Eric Rombough texted Officer Jonathan Adams on July 14, 2021, records show.

I am a qualified expert. Having learned from the best in the business, Adams responded 20 minutes later, according to the report.

The scandal-ridden Antioch Police Department has seen a cascade of opprobrium since March 2022, when a Superior Court judge signed a search warrant authorizing authorities to seize the phones of nine officers in as part of an ongoing FBI criminal investigation. Since then, police have been dogged by federal lawsuits, a civil rights investigation by the California attorney general and an ongoing conviction integrity investigation that has, so far, resulted in the overturning of dozens of felony charges.

More than a dozen current and former officers from Antioch and Pittsburgh are being investigated for alleged crimes ranging from possible violent civil rights violations and assaults, to fraudulent schemes for pay raises , drug trafficking, obstruction of justice and weapons violations. The racist and homophobic text messages, uncovered by the FBI and the Contra Costa District Attorney during the criminal investigation, implicated many other Antioch cops who are currently under investigation or placed in vacations.

So far, none of the officers have been fired, while an internal investigation continues. At least 12 officers are identified in documents obtained Friday.

These new recordings describe messages between Rombough already known to be among the Antioch officers under criminal investigation and various colleagues. Many of them involve conversations between Rombough and Adams. Of the nearly 200 posts described, only a handful have ever been published in past reports by a Contra Costa DA inspector.

As with previous batches of racist text messages sent between officers in Antioch, the latest messages dated late 2019 to early 2022 again include repeated references to black people as gorillas, often accompanied by racist memes and an emoji of monkey. But they also include numerous slurs aimed at Latinos, a joke about Adams acting like a Jew while filing his taxes, and various homophobic slurs, according to the documents.

(Officer Scott) Duggar and I just had to pull gorillas out of a car after he flexed his blackness, Rombough allegedly texted Adams in August 2021. Less than 20 seconds later, Adams allegedly replied with an emoji laughing.

Conversations between Adams and Rombough contained frequent jokes about letting black people kill each other or generally making fun of the violence in the city. In a message, Adams remarked that the city needed a week of legitimate purge. On January 24, 2022, after a gunman shot dead Victor Coleman II, 50, who was black, outside a liquor store in Antioch, Rombough allegedly texted Adams Another Number 2 bites the dust, using a slang term for human excrement.

Just doing what they do best, Adams reportedly replied.

A month before Steven Ford was sworn in as acting police chief, but after it was announced internally as the next chief, Adams texted Rombough, Have you met the new chief yet (gorilla emoji )?

Ford did not immediately respond to a request for comment. Neither did Romborough’s lawyer. Adams has left ODA, while Rombough is on leave.

Several other texts speak of explicit homophobia. One, by Constable Brock Marcotte, simply contains a capitalized homophobic slur without any context. Another, allegedly written by Marcotte in October 2020, says: Any kid wearing checkered shorts and that kind of beanie has no chance of not being an f. Rick Hoffman, the president of the Antioch Police Officers Association, reportedly responded to the remark by selecting the laughing reaction on his phone, as did Rombough, according to the documents.

One officer bragged about being able to spot ws from a mile away, using an anti-Latino slur. In another instance, an officer said he walked past a party for a dead b, using another slur.

Gotta go back to the ws again, Rombough reportedly wrote in April 2021, adding seconds later that he had focused too long on black investigations. He also reportedly wrote that he wanted to focus on bs and blanks.

In a message sent on February 28, 2022 less than a month before Rombough’s phone was seized by the FBI, Adams said he was having lunch on a golf course when he recognized a popular rapper from Antioch, Big Tone, having lunch a few tables away. Adams describes the rappers’ lunch buddy as a man with tattoos all over his face and a bald (sic) head, to which Rombough uses an insult and replies, Oh w.

Civil rights lawyer John Burris, who has sued for oversight of the APD, said on Friday the latest posts confirmed our belief that it was a rotten department until the end. bone marrow.

Obviously a person who makes these kinds of statements has a sense of freedom that you can do that, and there’s a level of acceptance among other officers, Burris said. No one has come forward after these comments.

Shagoofa Khan, an activist from Antioch who has previously been the subject of degrading text messages from city police, reacted with shock to the latest messages: These people are brutal. I don’t know how they became police in the first place.

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