The city of Antioch, California and members of its police force have been hit with a federal lawsuit for civil rights violations stemming from a long list of racist text messages that have shocked the community.
John Burris, an Oakland-based civil rights lawyer, filed the complaint in federal court Wednesday on behalf of four individuals who say they were targeted by police officers who sent text messages using slurs to describe Black people and joking about fabricating evidence and beating on suspects. A fifth plaintiff is suing on behalf of his father, who was shot and killed by two of the officers involved in the text scandal.
“This fact pattern is the most pervasive racial hatred case I’ve ever been involved in,” Burris said at a news conference Thursday outside the Antioch Police Department, “this conduct itself was so horrible that it was more than just locker room talk, it was a state of mind.”
Antioch police chief Steven Ford addressed the racist texting scandal saying, “The Antioch PD will never be the same again, and that’s not a bad thing,” said Ford, who was not with the department at the time the text messages were sent. Ford read some of the text messages out loud during Tuesday’s interview.
“This says ‘I was bummed that beast’ and then it’s blacked out ‘was so fat because he didn’t bruise up very fast,'” he read from a redacted investigation report from the Contra Costa District Attorney’s office.
Investigators say at least 17 officers were part of a text messaging group on their personal phones for years where they would congratulate each other for intentionally hurting people during arrests, and repeatedly using the n-word. “It says ‘I’ll bury that N in my fields,’” Ford said as he continued to read the texts aloud.
FORD EXPLAINS HOW IT FEELS TO READ THOSE TEXT MESSAGES
“It angers me. I’ll be honest with you. It angers me. I think most people who know me I’m pretty low-key,” said Ford. “Normally it takes a lot to kind of get me going. But I would be lying if I said I weren’t, you know, very angry and frustrated with what I’ve read and seen over the past few weeks.”
“You think, wow, I mean, I’ve worked with this person and I’ve trusted this person, you know, we’ve been out here, you know, as they say, you know, on the street doing police work,” said Ford. “And so it’s very disappointing, very shocking, you know?”
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