San Francisco officials were forced to ponder that question last year when an investigation revealed that five veteran cops were texting virulently racist messages to each other. My office is conducting an immediate assessment of every prosecution within the past ten years where these officers were involved, San Francisco District Attorney George Gascon said. Beyond that, much of the response was typical.
Police officials declared that the behavior, while abhorrent, was confined to a very few officers, an old guard that did not represent the general culture in the department.
But reformers like public defender Jeff Adachi warned that the problem was deeper. He called for the department to institute a 10-point plan to wring out racist and homophobic biases in the department, the Los Angeles Times reported, quoting him as saying, A person does not become a racist overnight. These were officers who in some cases had over a decade of service. We need to look at all of them.
San Francisco police officers sent dozens of racist and homophobic text messages in the past several months, even as another group of officers was being investigated by prosecutors for having traded similar messages, the New York Times reports. The newly disclosed texts include derogatory references to blacks, Asians, lesbians, gays and transgender people, and come as the federal government investigates complaints that some officers routinely behave in a racially biased manner.
The San Francisco Chronicle explains that the texts emerged during a probe of still more police misdeeds:
