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NY Times, May 16 2015
Racist Police Emails Put Florida Cases in Doubt
By FRANCES ROBLES
KEY WEST, Fla. — The Miami-Dade state attorney’s office is combing
through more than 150 criminal cases of black suspects arrested by Miami
Beach police officers who wrote or received racist emails, the latest in
a series of high-profile episodes around the nation that have raised
troubling questions about the relations between the police and the
communities they serve.
Two ranking officers at the Miami Beach Police Department sent about 230
emails that contained racist and sexist jokes and pornography from
2010-12, Chief Dan Oates announced Thursday. A former police captain,
who had been demoted to lieutenant, was fired, and a major retired
before the investigation was made public.
Fourteen other officers received the emails, the police department said.
After 4 Years, Florida Police Are Cleared in ShootingMARCH 17, 2015
The episode, which follows the release of racist or homophobic emails in
Ferguson, Mo.; San Francisco; and Fort Lauderdale, adds another level of
discord to the often-strained relations between the police and minority
groups. Officers in Edison, N.J.; Seattle; Baton Rouge, La.; and
Casselberry, Fla., have also been fired or disciplined over racist text
and email messages, a wave that some experts believe indicates a culture
in which officers are comfortable expressing racist views.
The episodes also raise questions about whether an officer’s flippant
attitude about race manifests itself on the streets.
“This behavior serves to belittle the people that we serve,” Katherine
Fernandez Rundle, the Miami-Dade County state attorney, said at a news
conference Thursday. “They belittle women, and they belittle minorities.”
A review of about a million emails showed that from 2010-12, the
supervisors had forwarded racist memes and jokes mocking blacks, women,
President Obama and Mexicans. One photo of a baby in a bassinet,
purporting to put to rest questions about Mr. Obama’s place of birth,
showed a baby in a Kentucky Fried Chicken bucket. One meme showed a
“Black Monopoly” board game on which each square had a police officer
directing the player to “go to jail.”
The state attorney’s office found that the officers involved were listed
as witnesses in 540 cases, including 97 that are pending. The majority
of the defendants were white or Hispanic.
In the 162 cases in which the defendant was listed as black, the state
attorney’s office is conducting a review to determine whether the case
relied solely on the testimony of an officer whose conduct is being
called into question. The emails raise the possibility that prosecutors
will have to reopen closed cases in which the officers played an
important role, said the state attorney’s spokesman, Ed Griffith. “If
there are indications of some kind of bias, if there is a pattern, then
clearly we have to remedy that,” Mr. Griffith said.
Eugene G. Gibbons, a lawyer who represents the fired lieutenant, Alex
Carulo, said his client’s dismissal was unfair, because the initial
internal affairs investigation had been presented to a previous police
chief two years ago. That chief, Raymond Martinez, had issued a written
reprimand to the major, Angel Vasquez, and the emails stopped. Mr.
Carulo was demoted last year when Mr. Oates took over, and this week he
was fired.
Mr. Gibbons questioned the decision to release the emails just before
Urban Beach Week, an annual hip-hop festival in Miami Beach over
Memorial Day weekend, which has been marred by clashes between the
police and partygoers. In 2011, eight Miami Beach police officers fired
at a reckless driver, killing him and wounding several bystanders.
“It’s a powder keg for these people, and they self-created it,” Mr.
Gibbons said.
Robert Jenkins, president of the Miami Beach Fraternal Order of Police,
agreed. “The people who are coming on Memorial Day are not
police-friendly,” Mr. Jenkins said. “Sometimes we feel there’s an
attitude of ‘them and us,’ and this is going to add to the tensions.”
Mr. Gibbons stressed that dozens of people, including assistant chiefs
and majors, had received or forwarded the offensive emails, which he
said indicated widespread but harmless activity.
“That was the culture back then,” Mr. Vasquez, the retired major, told
the local CBS channel last year. “It was just guys emailing each other.
There was a good ol’ boy mentality back then.”
Delores Jones-Brown, director of the Center on Race, Crime and Justice
at the John Jay College of Criminal Justice, said that any criminal
cases the officers touched were in jeopardy, because defense lawyers
could impeach the credibility of any officer involved.
“You would want prosecutors to take the lead,” she said. “You’d have to
look at the statute to see if the officers violated any harassment and
hate crime statutes. If they did, they can be charged.”
The Broward County, Fla., state attorney’s office was forced to drop 11
felony cases, 23 misdemeanors and one juvenile case after four Fort
Lauderdale police officers were caught sending racists texts, including
some that used racial epithets to refer to suspects they chased. An
officer also made a video trailer featuring actual police dogs and Ku
Klux Klan imagery.
All of the defendants in the dropped cases were black, said Ron Ishoy, a
spokesman for the Broward County state attorney. In all of those
instances, at least one of the four officers involved was the principal
officer in the arrest, he said.
“This is a serious matter,” Mr. Ishoy said in an email. “Beyond the
cases we’ve dropped, we continue to review other cases in which these
former policemen were the principal officers involved in the arrest. We
will drop charges against the defendants where it is appropriate.”
Howard Finkelstein, the Broward public defender, said the state attorney
and police investigations did not go far enough. “Look at the numbers.
How is it possible that in a city that is 31 percent black, 96 percent
of the people stopped walking or biking are black? How is that even
possible, statistically?”
His office is reviewing 45 of the officers’ cases.
“I can assure you that if people think the beating of black young men is
funny, then they are willing to beat young black men, period, end of
story,” Mr. Finkelstein said.
“It is not possible for an officer to use hate-filled language and
humor, but only on his private time.”
Marsha Ellison, president of the Fort Lauderdale branch of the
N.A.A.C.P., said the city had reprimanded only low-ranking officers and
had not, for example, disciplined the K-9 officers who allowed their
dogs to be used in the video.
“The city wants us to believe that a 22-year-old kid on the force for
three years was the mastermind of all of this,” she said.
The three Fort Lauderdale officers who were fired are appealing their
dismissals; one resigned. One of the fired men, Christopher Sousa, 25,
said he had sent an apology to the N.A.A.C.P.
“I made a mistake, a huge one, and I am so sorry for it,” Mr. Sousa
said. “I understand that some people will never forgive me.”
On Friday, the San Francisco district attorney’s office, which is
reviewing some 3,000 cases in which one of 14 officers who sent or
received offensive texts was listed as the primary officer, said it had
so far dismissed eight criminal cases.
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