Three white police officers in Wilmington, North Carolina, have been fired after their department discovered video of inflammatory chatter about black people, NBC reports.
A video recorder apparently was accidentally activated in a squad car while the cops talked back and forth on cellphones and through car windows while parked alongside each other.
The officers, who range in age from 44 to 50 years old, criticized their new black police chief, a local black magistrate, and BLM protests, and used the “N” word, but their chatter went far beyond that.
One said a civil war is “coming” and he’s “ready” to “go out and start slaughtering them f—— N-words” when martial law is declared, adding, “I can’t wait. God, I can’t wait.” He said society “needs” a civil war to “wipe ’em off the f—— map. That’ll put ’em back about four or five generations.” Another talked about putting a “bullet in the head” of a black female suspect arrested a day earlier, while the third officer complained of “white people bowing down on their knees and worshipping blacks.”
Read story here and here and watch the city’s press conference below.
As I’ve argued before, here and on HorsesAss.org, American policing is in a crisis and needs comprehensive reform in how police officers are recruited, trained, supervised, and disciplined. As this incident makes clear, the wrong people have been hired by police departments, training and supervision are inadequate, and until now discipline has been all but nonexistent. It’s a step in the right direction that killer cops are finally being prosecuted, bad cops are now being fired, and racist cops like these are being weeded out. We’re also seeing more black police chiefs in communities of color. But a piecemeal approach isn’t enough; America’s 18,000-plus law enforcement agencies need a thorough shakeup and to make fundamental changes in how policing is done in America. We need law enforcement, and absolutely should appreciate our police officers who do the job properly, but there’s work to do.
It is good to see the Wilmington ministry of truth hard at work. Wow racists exist in Wilmington who knew? It ok for employers and the state to spy on employees. Hurrah Hurrah!!! Will they set up the stocks in front of the ministry to give the people the proper opportunity to teach these miscreants? Is it possible they are the last of their kind and perhaps they should be locked up in the Wilmington zoo as the last of their kind or does the Wilmington Ministry of Truth have more work to do?
Since N Carolina is a one party state it seems unlikely either participant agreed to the call being recorded. Maybe the best thing to have happened to this accidental recording is for it to have gone to the circular file. The Wilmington police department cannot use illegal means to collect evidence no matter how deserving or stupid these individual cops are. Hopefully the cops are paid up members of their union who should diligently and aggressively take the department to task. Chance the city will end up signing a big check. Or not. Either should be interesting questions of law. Doubt those boring civil suits will make the news or the quiet settlement by the city…cha ching for 3 cops.
Mark, I don’t understand why you’re defending these officers, but I’ll skip that and go straight to the legal issue, which is not materially different from the questions that arose when email first came into wide use. The short answer is that employees have no expectation of privacy when using employer-owned computers and email systems. If you do it on the company’s system, the boss can access it. This isn’t my opinion; this is what the courts have ruled. In this case, the cops were on duty, in city-owned patrol vehicles, and were recorded on city-owned equipment. There’s no privacy violation here, for the same reasons. In addition, what they do on the job is the city’s business, and reviewing patrol car recordings is a legitimate supervisory function. Any lawyer would tell you there is no valid argument that this evidence was improperly obtained.