A San Francisco police officer exchanged racist and homophobic texts with other law enforcement officers. From CNN:
"I hate that beaner," one text reads, "but I think the nig is worse."
"Indian ppl are disgusting," proclaims another.
"Burn down walgreens and kill the bums," a third message states.
The texts were sent and received by Officer Jason Lai, and many have been acquired by CNN. Lai resigned from the department earlier this month.
This is not the first time Lai has been suspected of misconduct. Last year a woman accused him of sexual assault, but ultimately prosecutors declined to file rape charges in the case.
From CNN:
In addition to disparaging blacks, Hispanics and Indians, Lai used coded language to talk about gay officers, according to a source, and made a blanket statement impugning residents of the city's largely minority and low-income Tenderloin district.
"They're all drug dealers in the TL," his text stated.
The officer also referred to a draft of an official incident report as "a story I wrote today."
Lai, who was identified as Chinese by his attorney, makes several references to "hock gwai," apparently a misspelled reference to the Cantonese "hak gwai," a derogatory phrase for African Americans.
In a series of texts sent last June he describes an incident involving a "bunch of hock gwais shooting each other."
"Sprained my ankle over these barbarians," he says.
One of the suspects "went to the hospital after he got shot lol," the officer texted.
"Too bad none of them died," he added. "One less to worry about."
This is disgusting behavior on the part of San Francisco’s law enforcement. And it’s very bad news for the SFPD, which faced a similar scandal involving racist text messages just last year. Almost 3,000 arrests were subject to review after the city discovered officers had been sending racist and homophobic texts. The city admitted that such biases could have resulted in unjust convictions.
Since that scandal, SFPD Chief Greg Suhr has insisted that racism in the department was isolated to those officers. Jason Lai's behavior puts such assertions in serious doubt.
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