Text messages between police officers in the Los Angeles suburb of Torrance, California, have made the news and brought attention to the department's practices.
The Los Angeles Times broke the story about the former officers charged with conspiracy and vandalizing a citizen's car. The first look at alleged text messages between them and other cops that featured offensive humor centered on themes of race, religion, and sexuality was provided by the two fired cops.
Anti-Semitic jokes, threats to assault members of the LGBTQIA+ community, and photos of Black men being lynched with the slogan "hanging with the homies" were some of the text messages. These types of exchanges were shared between more than a dozen officers who are currently on paid leave.
Rob Bonta stated that the reports are very disturbing and that they are committed to going wherever the facts lead and making sure they remedy the situation and get the Torrance Police Department on a corrective course of action.
There are no criminal charges connected to these text messages. The Los Angeles Times is going to revisit its history with the department.
The DOJ investigated the police department in 1996. A deep dive into the department revealed that rookies were told to profile Blacks and use abbreviations when talking about them.
The use of two epithetic slogans was found by the feds. They said that NIT stands for 'N-gger in Torrance' and NITAD stands for a black person spotted after dark. One officer stated in the filing that rookies were told in training that there were two categories of African Americans: street ngers and upstanding Black citizens. He claimed that officers were told to pull over minority drivers.
It was difficult to prove that members of the force were racist 25 years ago. It may be difficult to prove in 2021.
The lawyers for the two officers accused of the hate crime are asking for the text messages to be thrown. The lawyers believe that the search warrant was broad and violated California's digital privacy law.
The presiding judge has not decided if the text messages will be used as evidence or if the other 13-15 officers will be fired.
No one has been fired for sending the texts. Almost 90 different cases connected to the cops in question have been dismissed.
According to CNN, the Los Angeles County District Attorney has dismissed 40 felony cases involving members of this small group of police. Almost 50 charges were dismissed by the city attorney. These cases and others related to law enforcement abuse of power are up for review.
The Los Angeles County public defender commented that it brought into question the credibility of the officers.
The Los Angeles County District Attorney is committed to reviewing cases against officers that have been accused of racism, abuse of force, and cultural bias.
On or off duty, the D.A. reprimanded police-involved bigotry. In February, he issued a statement about the sharing of a mock card with George Floyd's face on it.
The gag about the murder of a black man by police demonstrates a lack of humanity. The law enforcement culture has a lot of problematic and racist perceptions about the communities we are sworn to protect and serve.
He launched an independent team called the Factual Analysis Citizen consulting team on June 12 to re-examine fatal use-of-force incidents by law enforcement officers.
The District Attorney said that there were significant concerns raised by law enforcement officials, civil rights attorneys, activists and others. In order to restore trust and move forward as a community, I have convened this group to thoroughly review the evidence and make recommendations on cases that we may need to examine more closely.
The investigation from the city's side is more sincere than it was in the past. Yahoo! The outside law firm was hired by the police to review the investigation.
The newly appointed Police Chief at the Torrance Police Department said that he would not tolerate any form of bigotry, racism, hate, or misconduct. I will work with Attorney General Bonta to make needed changes to regain the public's trust and confidence.
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