Racist Oregon Police Chief Marvin Hoover
Yeah,
this really happened ... in 2015 ... in Oregon.
On June 25, two Clatskanie, Oregon, police officers witnessed something horrific. The fallout from what they witnessed has been just as bad, and the implications reveal that racism runs throughout the city.
According to the city website, "Clatskanie has been described as a Norman Rockwell picturesque small city nestled in green hills and valleys on the coastal range in northwest Oregon." This comparison, it turns out, is actually highly appropriate because many observers believe that the bulk of Rockwell's paintings were racist and displayed a white supremacist vision of America in which black folk were perpetually subservient.
Officer Alex Stone, who is white, arrested an African-American woman, one of less than 10 black residents in the town, on June 25. During the arrest, she told Officer Stone that she was going to sue the department for racism. When the officer arrived back at the station, he decided, as was standard, to debrief Police Chief Marvin Hoover, also a white man, on the incident. Chief Hoover, mind you, is an award-winning veteran leader of this police department. What followed, and was witnessed by multiple officers, is deeply disturbing.
As Officer Stone was describing his earlier arrest to Chief Hoover, he said to the chief that the woman he arrested said that local police think black people are animals. At that point, according to multiple eyewitness accounts, the chief interrupted Officer Stone and said, "That's what they are. They're animals."
“Chief Hoover placed his hands in his armpits and began scratching them. Chief Hoover also started making loud monkey sounds: ‘Hooo... hooo..... hooo....hahahaha...
hooo.....haaah. While Chief Hoover was scratching and chanting, he started to move around the room, in a dance or jumping fashion. While jumping and moving about the room Chief Hoover momentarily beat his chest like Tarzan.”
Officer Zack Gibson, who was also there, witnessed the incident and stated:
“Officer Stone brushed aside the antic, but I could observe that it bothered him. At the same time I was in disbelief that the Chief of Police was acting in such a manner while an officer is concerned he may be accused of racism.”
At that point, Chief Hoover doubled down on his racism.
“Chief Hoover then started to sing the words to Dixieland: 'In a land of cotton...old times they’re not forgotten...look away...look away...look away.'
As the chief sang the song, he kneeled down and began to make a punching motion with his right fist.
While making a punching motion, Chief Hoover held his left hand in front of him in a gripping motion, as if he was holding a person by the shirt collar. In addition, while singing the words “look away” Chief Hoover moved his head back-and-forth to his left and right as if he was looking over his shoulder.".
The chief then laughed and left the room, but the story gets worse.
When Officer Stone communicated how disturbed he was to his superior, Sergeant McQuiddy, Stone states in his report that McQuiddy "got extremely quiet and unresponsive .. and offered no guidance on filing a complaint." Without the support of his superior, Officers Stone and Gibson contacted their union and local attorneys, who asked them to ask Sgt. McQuiddy to join their complaint one last time. This time, the response was even worse. Officer Stone stated:
Sgt. McQuiddy told me didn't believe anything would happen to Chief Hoover and that the city would make life hell for us for doing this. Sgt. McQuiddy said it would "be hell" at least three times during our last conversation. I almost felt as if I was being dissuaded from pursuing a complaint.
When Officer Gibson spoke to Sgt. McQuiddy on his own about the complaint, the sergeant stated that he was concerned some type of "retaliation" may come, particularly if they told City Manager Greg Hinkelman.
Indeed, the retaliation has already started for Officer Stone.
Officer Stone said some members of the community began harassing him after he filed the report against Chief Hoover.
“I’ve already faced a lot of retaliation, my wife’s been forced off the road twice,” he explained. “I’ve had people in the community yelling the N-word at me.”
During the investigation of this entire ordeal, Chief Hoover was given a paid vacation before he voluntarily retired.
Not surprisingly, the local mayor wrote him a glowing tribute in the town newspaper without a single mention of this incident.
This type of overt racism, though, is not limited to Chief Marvin Hoover in rural Oregon.
Often thought to be patrolling the most liberal big city in America, the San Francisco Police Department, while being investigated for corruption, was also found to have a deep and horrendous problem with racism.
The same thing happened in Ft. Lauderdale.
And in Miami.
And Ohio.
And Baton Rouge.
And New Jersey.
And Georgia.
And, of course, Ferguson.
If you click any one of those links above, you will find police officers routinely and freely speaking with one another in the ugliest, most violent, hateful manner about African Americans as if it's no big deal.
In the current San Francisco racism scandal, thousands of cases are now under review and some cases are being dismissed outright, after a captain and highest-ranking sergeant of the San Francisco Police Department were found to be overtly racist.
In Ferguson, Missouri, the exhaustive Department of Justice investigation could not determine if Darren Wilson acted on racist instincts when he shot and killed Mike Brown, but it did fully determine that his supervisor, Sgt. William Mudd, and the captain of the entire force, Richard Henke, were overtly racist. They resigned in shame, as did the chief of police, after the report was released.
In Dayton, Ohio, the popular captain of the Montgomery County Police Department, Thomas Flanders, was found to be sending texts like "I hate niggers. That is all" back and forth to his top detective.
This Georgia police chief resigned in disgrace after he was caught calling African Americans "niggers" in text messages.
In Miami, the racism was so widespread that more than a dozen officers have been implicated and hundreds of cases are having to be reviewed.