"We're not supposed to laugh but this is so funny."
In Seattle, Washington, about one-third of the officers in the Port of Seattle Police Department are under investigation after exchanging racist, sexually explicit and sexist emails for over two years. During that entire time, other field officers and even supervisors spent hours while onduty reading the emails without a single one of them reporting them.
The Seattle Post Intelligencer wrote this article detailing the emerging scandal which began
after a female officer raised allegations of harassment and when investigators looked at the computer records of her alleged harasser, they found the emails. It turned out that dozens of emails had been sent out which included racist and derogatory comments about African-Americans, Asian-Americans, Arab-Americans and Latinos, not to mention videos and photographs which were also derogatory in nature. Sexually explicit comments and photographs were also emailed involving women which showed them having sex, giving oral sex and defecating on each other.
It was all just for fun, of course, just a few laughs to be shared among friends in an ever widening circle. This is one of the ways that law enforcement officers in several different agencies across the country have been caught having fun in recent years. It's only when the communities they police find out what they have done, then those involved and their employer are put on the spot and left to explain their actions. Usually, the first thing an agency will say is how shocked it is, how offensive the content discovered is and how it won't be tolerated.
However, the involved officers are most often shielded by laws originally set up to protect them from any abuses committed by their departments' management, but that are now also used to protect them from any calls for accountability by the communities they police. And if people of color are less likely to call 9-11 for their assistance and women are less likely to report sexual assaults to police officers who may be among those who circulated pornographic photographs of women, it doesn't appear to matter much to these police departments.
After all, men of color and women aren't really people, are they?
Not to the officers who engage in the misconduct and those who know about it but do or say nothing. Not to their supervisors who not only fail to report it but engage in it themselves. Not to the leadership who publicly issues statements on how they won't tolerate this activity, but in private do nothing or issue wrist slaps like those given in the case in Seattle. As far as any who may care, they traditionally remain very silent on this subject. They might as well not exist as far as the public is concerned, in that their silence causes communities hurt by these racist and sexist behaviors to doubt they do exist. Because if they did exist, then they'd be saying something to condemn it, right?
Well, no.
They don't call it the code of silence or the thin blue line for nothing. Few people in this country do not know what those phrases mean. What they mean in cases like the one in Seattle is that even if a police officer finds out what another police officer is doing that is wrong, whether it is racist, sexist for example, then that police officer is supposed to keep it to himself or herself and not report it. Given that so much of police business is still shrouded in confidentiality, there is no way to know if or how many officers report misconduct they witness or learn about to supervisors and how many of those supervisors follow through on investigating any that is reported say, in any given year. The police agencies don't want you to know these things nor do the police unions(not to mention city attorneys) even if it's just raw numbers of investigations that are initiated and completed.
The situation in Seattle hasn't provided a flattering picture of this process, what has finally come to light in at least one department there. The code of silence certainly is alive and well and it will live on.
But what is at stake as far as agencies like this one are concerned are the feelings of people who don't really matter anyway so there's no need to report this type of misconduct and no real need to hold anyone accountable for it. There also seems to exist a huge disconnect between how these officers police the same groups of people that they are both demeaning and making fun of through these emails and how many of them believe the two realities have nothing to do with each other. The public gets that they do, but many times these law enforcement agencies do not or at least that's what their actions show.
What's also at stake is whether or not people who fall in the groups chosen by the Port of Seattle Police Department to be demeaned, ridiculed and stereotyped will trust those who police them and it's fairly clear that this is also on the bottom of the list of concerns by this agency as well.
Men of color and women are objects to be ridiculed, stereotyped, demeaned, dehumanized and placed in situations where those doing these things dictate who they are and what purpose they fill. Even though men of color and women are also employed by these agencies and this racist and sexist behavior is at least in part, meant to put those individuals who do not fit in neatly to the White male structure that still dominates most law enforcement agencies into their proper places as well.
The situation that recently broke through the media in Seattle isn't any different than its predecessors, say the Videogate scandal that rocked the San Francisco Police Department in 2005. It's simply a racist, sexist culture that overflows the boundaries that usually keep it confined into the hidden recesses and refuges, and comes into the light of public exposure through the participation of a large number of employees in racist, sexist and often homophobic banter, jokes and physical depictions. Instead of these incidents taking place in the locker rooms, in the squad cars, in the field and in roll call rooms, they're taking place using recently developed technology that provides different means for officers to communicate with one another although unlike speech, anything in writing leaves the probability of exposure.
Here are some of the stereotypes portrayed in the emails, which were obtained by the local media.
The following stereotype became more popular after the terrorist attacks of 9-11. In fact, in the Riverside Police Department, Officer Roger Sutton had made allegations that in several incidents he had witnessed after 9-11, officers had made stereotypical comments about Arab-Americans and Muslims including the use of the slur, "towel head".
Arab-Americans are Islamic terrorists
In this case, an email was sent which stated the following:
Only racism isn't that simple and it's often treated as such, relegated to its most extreme examples. Racism isn't just about people running around in White robes and sheets and burning crosses. That's just how many White individuals define it because then it becomes for many of them an "other" which has nothing to do with them or their actions.
Racism is about circulating emails depicting racist stereotypes, jokes, comments and visual depictions. Racism is about laughing at it and not telling the person who sent it that it is offensive. Racism is about backing up officers who do this type of behavior and punishing those who step forward and report it, whether these actions are being carried out by rank and file officers, supervisors or those at the top of the organizational chart. Racism is about giving a law enforcement agency which employs individuals who engage in this behavior as well as those who know about it and do little or nothing, the power to police these same communities of people without holding them accountable for how they conduct themselves on the job.
What an agency does in this situation is what usually defines it, and there's little that the Port of Seattle Police Department did that defines it as anything but a racist and sexist law enforcement organization. However, the proof which indicts this particular police department is in what it didn't do.
Keeping this behavior to the inner circle is part of the code of silence that permeates many law enforcement agencies including this one in Seattle, but allowing racism to be one of the behaviors protected is racist.
The same rules listed above also apply to sexism and sexist behavior.
This email simply expresses the view that all Arab-Americans and all Muslims are terrorists. It's what is called a stereotype, and that's what all these emails have in common is that they are taking entire racial groups and one gender group and assigning them derogatory stereotypes. Individuals who engage in this behavior use it to bond with one another and strengthen relationships, as if the belief system of "us against them" doesn't go far enough for them.
But if you're among the vast majority of Arab-Americans(many of whom are actually Christian) and Muslims(many of whom are not Arab-American) in this country who do not engage in terrorist activity, why would you want to call the police if you needed their assistance? As reports of profiling have increased after the 9-11 terrorist attacks against those perceived to be of Middle-Eastern background, how do scandals like this one impact how the public views this issue? If you were from a Middle-Eastern background and the victim of a hate crime or incident, would you want to report it to a police department which employs officers who behave in this fashion?
Because African-Americans and Latinos have experienced racial profiling by police officers as well, and have also been the butt of racist and stereotypical humor by law enforcement officers, they know what this is all about. They have also been the victims of hate crimes and would they want to report them to law enforcement officers who behave like those officers did in Seattle?
Here is one another example of that behavior courtesy of an email sent by an officer from the Port of Seattle Police Department.
How to get rid of illegal Mexicans
This was one that was written by Officer Erik Schmidt who through an email sent a video where a narrator "hired" six Latino men whom he called "beaners" and claims are "illegal immigrants". He pretended to take them to a workplace, but instead he drove them to the Los Angeles Immigration office and blows a whistle to draw attention to the men. The six men run off yelling "INS" and the narrator claims he does this every three weeks "just for fun".
Because of course, all "Mexicans", all people with brown skin are "illegal immigrants" and all people of color including African-Americans, Latinos and Asian-Americans are only to be labeled by the use of an assortment of racist slurs. Because of course, people of color exist only to be laughed at, or joked about, or referred to in ways that strip them of their humanity. And of course, this is all in the name of humor, including what is called "gallows humor" and fun and all that. It's part and parcel of the racist, sexist police culture at the Port of Seattle Police Department that allows and even condones police officers to use members of these racial groups in a demeaning and stereotypical fashion in order to have their fun.
Once the Port of Seattle Police Department's management woke up and discovered that it had racist and sexist police officers running amok in its midst, how did that agency respond? There's been a lot of talk in this case as there have been in all the episodes of similar misconduct which have preceded it that this is just a bunch of "rogue" officers, or "bad apples" in the midst of a stellar law enforcement agency.
Of course, with this particular agency, those dusted-off alibis and excuses won't hold up to the scrutiny of most people because in this case, there was a large percentage of its officers engaging in this behavior while hiding in plain sight. And as it turned out, at least in the department's own investigation, not much happened.
Slaps on the wrist
Deputy Police Chief Gale Evans said in lieu of the police chief who had nothing to say about the matter, that the behavior was "appalling...It won't be tolerated". But anyone following this scandal will have to keep their eyes on the situation over a period of time and see if words said to media outlets translate into meaningful actions. You have to watch what the department's leadership does when the media's attention goes away.
(excerpt)
Though some in the department recommended tougher punishment for those caught up in the current case, few of the officers involved were disciplined. Nine got written reprimands, and others who received e-mails, but didn't store or forward them, were let go without punishment.
The accused harasser, Sgt. Jon Schorsch, 39, also was found to have misused the Internet, but he resigned under threat of termination after a judge issued a protection order in the harassment case.
No one, including lieutenants and sergeants, was punished for failure to report the Internet abuse, though failure to do that is a department rule violation.
A zero-tolerance policy against this type of conduct in the workplace which the department heads insisted was in place translated mostly into written reprimands which the department said were "serious" discipline. The department promised to take much stiffer actions against its officers if this behavior ever happened again. It is most likely that it will, given enough time after this current episode, because the department has essentially issued a permission slip to officers in its police department to do it again, only next time don't get caught.
After all, when it did happen, it was treated by slapping some of the involved parties on the wrist and by giving a free pass to the supervisors who are entrusted by the agency and the public to make sure their charges behave themselves. Consequently, it probably will happen again.
What happened to the supervisors when they uncovered the misconduct or in this case received the racist and sexist emails, has been the focus of much of the city's concern. Why did they do nothing?
Maybe several supervisors didn't report the misconduct that happened in their midst because they were too busy sending the emails or laughing at the content themselves. King5.com's article, The email scandal by the numbers , stated that two lieutenant and 12 sergeants either sent, received or stored the emails, which means that about one-third of the officers involved in the scandal were supervisors. What this fact translates into is that once again, this isn't about "bad apples" running amok within the workplace email system, this is about an agency with systemic racism and sexism entrenched in its culture from top to bottom. The reality is that the department itself will be the last to figure that out and it will take even longer to admit it.
The department was also mandating anti-harassment training as part of how it will handle the situation. That's a drop in the bucket in a department with this misconduct going on in its midst.
Besides, hasn't the department already implemented anti-harassment training and policies as law enforcement agencies in most states are required to do? If so, it doesn't look like either had any positive effect in this police department. There's no point in adding more training if police officers especially supervisors in that department have just been given a pointed lesson on how they won't be held accountable for racist or sexist behavior. Who would report it next time, if there was little to no response this time?
Through slapping a few wrists and especially through failing to hold the supervisors responsible, the police department did show that this conduct would be tolerated. If anyone doubts that, just wait a few months, six months, a year and watch what happens to these officers including those who received "serious" written reprimands. Watch to see how many of them get promoted. Watch to see how many of them the department holds up as role models on an awards podium. That will make it clear in a way that mere words spoken in the heat of a breaking scandal just can't.
The proof isn't what you hear today, it's what you see tomorrow. And the day after and so on.
Seattlest.com blogged about this episode and mentioned a prior incident involving pornographic email that was uncovered but in that case, the officer was exonerated although the police chief at the time did say that this incident led to the potential of it happening again.
And then some.
Paula Zahn from CNN discussed the scandal on her show, according to the transcripts here. She had a panel of guests comment on the episode and its implications in law enforcement.
Here are some of the comments from that program.
(excerpt)
"This was active suppression. Seattle Port Authority absolutely knew exactly what was going on with its officers and sought to conceal it."
---James Bible, NAACP
Bible then asks if the Port of Seattle Police Department can treat people of color fairly in communities if they are engaging in this form of racist and sexist misconduct. That's probably the question of the hour as it should be.
It's hard to know from the police department what its answer would be because it isn't responding to the public on these issues and their measures to truly address them. On the other hand, if an agency's actions don't match its words or it chooses to remain silent, then that in itself provides some form of answer.
"Just in terms of the public trust that police officers have to the general public and I think this was somewhat of a break of confidence on our police department."
---Lloyd Hara, Commissioner, Port of Seattle
Yes indeed. Particularly among those who were the butt of racist, sexist and sexual comments, jokes, photographs and videos which were sent through workplace emails. But no matter how many times representatives of these groups that are most often demeaned and ridiculed by law enforcement officers try to explain this to those in law enforcement agencies, these agencies always either act as if it's the first time they've heard these complaints or they turn around and make fun of those who complain about it.
The Port of Seattle Commission strikes back
The Port of Seattle Commission announced in late January that it would be conducting its own investigation into the email scandal in this article by the Seattle Post Intelligencer. The body claims that it was misled by the department and that it obtained nearly all of its information on the scandal from the local press. Adding to that, was information provided by an unidentified source to the newspaper that the number of officers involved in the scandal had been grossly underestimated by the department and in actuality, it was two-thirds of the entire department which was involved. That revelation if it holds up shouldn't be all that surprising at this juncture in time.
An email from someone who claimed to be a police officer from the involved department was also received by Port Commission President John Creighton. It's very telling that the one police officer who has raised an objection to the behavior of others in this agency is keeping his name to himself. Does he or she fear harassment, being ostracized, not receiving backup when needed on the job or being the focus of reenergized internal affairs investigations?
(excerpt)
"It saddens me to say everything in those articles is true," the author said, referring to news reports in the P-I and on KING/5.
"The lieutenants and sergeants involved in the email scandal should have been demoted and suspended," the e-mail writer said. "Our only hope to begin to repair the damage done, to try and reestablish the Port Police's credibility, rests now in the Commission's hands."
The code of silence is clearly alive and well in the Port of Seattle Police Department even in the wake of the investigation of the misconduct. So nothing's really changed and it's business as usual.
This police officer if indeed this is a police officer has clearly lost faith in the mechanisms inside his or her own agency to do the job and is seeking outside assistance, something most law enforcement agencies and officers are loathe to do. As part of this new investigation, the commission will be offering whistle blower protection to any employee of the Port of Seattle Police Department who comes forward with allegations or information in relation to the email scandal.
Members of the Port Commission said that they were upset at the department's lack of disclosure regarding the scope of the scandal.
(excerpt)
"I'm pretty upset that it looks to me that something was trying to be swept under the rug," Commissioner Bob Edwards said Monday.
At any rate, it appears that the commission has little faith in the department's ability to investigate its own officers' misconduct and hold them accountable so now it's stepping up to do so itself.
Even if the sergeants weren't so upset about the emails they may or may not have been reading, they collectively sent a memo to the commission stating that they were upset with other problems involving how internal investigations and disciplinary procedures were conducted and complained that morale was low. It usually is in the wake of law enforcement scandals.
I wouldn't imagine that morale and was any higher in the communities served by this police department. The lack of trust in the communities towards the ability of the police to treat them fairly, during the times when of course they aren't sending racist and sexist emails, is probably much lower and sinking rapidly.
But if you learn anything from this sorry episode, the latest on a list of sorry episodes, it should be two things. One, is that actions speak much louder than words and on its actions is how a law enforcement agency should be judged. The other being is that as the case involving the Port of Seattle Police Department has shown, it's far too often the perception of a law enforcement agency that is perpetuated through the code of silence that matters much more than its reality.
A family who sued after their son was shot to death by a Fontana Police Department officer in 2004 settled out of court, according to the Press Enterprise.
Family receives $1 million from settlement in wrongful death case
This police department had 23 officer-involved shootings between 1996 and 2006, in a city of 175,000. One of those was this one, the fatal shooting of Randy Perchez, Jr. by Officer Richard Guerrero who shot Perchez after the man had grabbed his flashlight according to the police department which supported his actions.
However, a federal judge said that Guerrero had a background of seven excessive force investigations. The San Bernardino County District Attorney's office did not file criminal charges against Guerrero, stating that there was insufficient evidence to prove the charges within a reasonable doubt to a jury, but this office did include this shooting on a curious list it has of shootings it believed to be unjustified. There are five shootings on this list including the 2006 shooting of Elio Carrion by San Bernardino County Sheriff Deputy Ivory Webb, Jr.
Webb became the first law enforcement officer in San Bernardino County to face criminal charges in connection with an onduty shooting and is currently awaiting trial on April 23 on attempted voluntary manslaughter and weapons assault charges.
(excerpt)
"It was a very, very bad shooting," attorney John Burton said. "This shooting stands as close to an act of murder as I've ever seen."
These were the other three shootings that the District Attorney's office believed to be unjustified.
(excerpt)
Jose Luis Perea, 47, died Feb. 9, 2003, after reserve sheriff's Deputy John Monaghan, also a high-ranking Los Angeles County prosecutor, shot him in the neck while investigating a burglary report in Fontana.
County records show Perea's family settled for $450,000.
Evan Scott Smith, 25, died after Deputy Andrew Mathews responded to a 911 call July 16, 2002, that Smith was drunk, tearing up his Crestline home and threatening his wife.
Investigators said no evidence suggested that Mathews was facing imminent death or great bodily injury. Smith's family settled a lawsuit for $530,000.
Sergio Rivera survived a bullet fired by Deputy Donna Wilson on July 4, 2002, during a struggle after she and Deputy Paul Jacome responded to a Muscoy home about a domestic violence call.
Rivera filed a claim but never went forward with a lawsuit, said Ronald Owens, a San Bernardino County liability manager. No payments were ever made.
The Seattle Post Intelligencer wrote this article detailing the emerging scandal which began
after a female officer raised allegations of harassment and when investigators looked at the computer records of her alleged harasser, they found the emails. It turned out that dozens of emails had been sent out which included racist and derogatory comments about African-Americans, Asian-Americans, Arab-Americans and Latinos, not to mention videos and photographs which were also derogatory in nature. Sexually explicit comments and photographs were also emailed involving women which showed them having sex, giving oral sex and defecating on each other.
It was all just for fun, of course, just a few laughs to be shared among friends in an ever widening circle. This is one of the ways that law enforcement officers in several different agencies across the country have been caught having fun in recent years. It's only when the communities they police find out what they have done, then those involved and their employer are put on the spot and left to explain their actions. Usually, the first thing an agency will say is how shocked it is, how offensive the content discovered is and how it won't be tolerated.
However, the involved officers are most often shielded by laws originally set up to protect them from any abuses committed by their departments' management, but that are now also used to protect them from any calls for accountability by the communities they police. And if people of color are less likely to call 9-11 for their assistance and women are less likely to report sexual assaults to police officers who may be among those who circulated pornographic photographs of women, it doesn't appear to matter much to these police departments.
After all, men of color and women aren't really people, are they?
Not to the officers who engage in the misconduct and those who know about it but do or say nothing. Not to their supervisors who not only fail to report it but engage in it themselves. Not to the leadership who publicly issues statements on how they won't tolerate this activity, but in private do nothing or issue wrist slaps like those given in the case in Seattle. As far as any who may care, they traditionally remain very silent on this subject. They might as well not exist as far as the public is concerned, in that their silence causes communities hurt by these racist and sexist behaviors to doubt they do exist. Because if they did exist, then they'd be saying something to condemn it, right?
Well, no.
They don't call it the code of silence or the thin blue line for nothing. Few people in this country do not know what those phrases mean. What they mean in cases like the one in Seattle is that even if a police officer finds out what another police officer is doing that is wrong, whether it is racist, sexist for example, then that police officer is supposed to keep it to himself or herself and not report it. Given that so much of police business is still shrouded in confidentiality, there is no way to know if or how many officers report misconduct they witness or learn about to supervisors and how many of those supervisors follow through on investigating any that is reported say, in any given year. The police agencies don't want you to know these things nor do the police unions(not to mention city attorneys) even if it's just raw numbers of investigations that are initiated and completed.
The situation in Seattle hasn't provided a flattering picture of this process, what has finally come to light in at least one department there. The code of silence certainly is alive and well and it will live on.
But what is at stake as far as agencies like this one are concerned are the feelings of people who don't really matter anyway so there's no need to report this type of misconduct and no real need to hold anyone accountable for it. There also seems to exist a huge disconnect between how these officers police the same groups of people that they are both demeaning and making fun of through these emails and how many of them believe the two realities have nothing to do with each other. The public gets that they do, but many times these law enforcement agencies do not or at least that's what their actions show.
What's also at stake is whether or not people who fall in the groups chosen by the Port of Seattle Police Department to be demeaned, ridiculed and stereotyped will trust those who police them and it's fairly clear that this is also on the bottom of the list of concerns by this agency as well.
Men of color and women are objects to be ridiculed, stereotyped, demeaned, dehumanized and placed in situations where those doing these things dictate who they are and what purpose they fill. Even though men of color and women are also employed by these agencies and this racist and sexist behavior is at least in part, meant to put those individuals who do not fit in neatly to the White male structure that still dominates most law enforcement agencies into their proper places as well.
The situation that recently broke through the media in Seattle isn't any different than its predecessors, say the Videogate scandal that rocked the San Francisco Police Department in 2005. It's simply a racist, sexist culture that overflows the boundaries that usually keep it confined into the hidden recesses and refuges, and comes into the light of public exposure through the participation of a large number of employees in racist, sexist and often homophobic banter, jokes and physical depictions. Instead of these incidents taking place in the locker rooms, in the squad cars, in the field and in roll call rooms, they're taking place using recently developed technology that provides different means for officers to communicate with one another although unlike speech, anything in writing leaves the probability of exposure.
Here are some of the stereotypes portrayed in the emails, which were obtained by the local media.
The following stereotype became more popular after the terrorist attacks of 9-11. In fact, in the Riverside Police Department, Officer Roger Sutton had made allegations that in several incidents he had witnessed after 9-11, officers had made stereotypical comments about Arab-Americans and Muslims including the use of the slur, "towel head".
Arab-Americans are Islamic terrorists
In this case, an email was sent which stated the following:
"The Islamic terrorists who hate our guts and want to kill us, do not like to be called towel heads. From this point forward please refer to them as little sheet heads."
Actually it's the people who write emails like this and find them hilarious who may be the ones wearing sheets over their heads as hoods. This officer is responding to complaints from Arab-Americans, Sikhs and Muslims in general about being called "towel heads", not actual terrorists and joking about it by replacing one slur with another.Only racism isn't that simple and it's often treated as such, relegated to its most extreme examples. Racism isn't just about people running around in White robes and sheets and burning crosses. That's just how many White individuals define it because then it becomes for many of them an "other" which has nothing to do with them or their actions.
Racism is about circulating emails depicting racist stereotypes, jokes, comments and visual depictions. Racism is about laughing at it and not telling the person who sent it that it is offensive. Racism is about backing up officers who do this type of behavior and punishing those who step forward and report it, whether these actions are being carried out by rank and file officers, supervisors or those at the top of the organizational chart. Racism is about giving a law enforcement agency which employs individuals who engage in this behavior as well as those who know about it and do little or nothing, the power to police these same communities of people without holding them accountable for how they conduct themselves on the job.
What an agency does in this situation is what usually defines it, and there's little that the Port of Seattle Police Department did that defines it as anything but a racist and sexist law enforcement organization. However, the proof which indicts this particular police department is in what it didn't do.
Keeping this behavior to the inner circle is part of the code of silence that permeates many law enforcement agencies including this one in Seattle, but allowing racism to be one of the behaviors protected is racist.
The same rules listed above also apply to sexism and sexist behavior.
This email simply expresses the view that all Arab-Americans and all Muslims are terrorists. It's what is called a stereotype, and that's what all these emails have in common is that they are taking entire racial groups and one gender group and assigning them derogatory stereotypes. Individuals who engage in this behavior use it to bond with one another and strengthen relationships, as if the belief system of "us against them" doesn't go far enough for them.
But if you're among the vast majority of Arab-Americans(many of whom are actually Christian) and Muslims(many of whom are not Arab-American) in this country who do not engage in terrorist activity, why would you want to call the police if you needed their assistance? As reports of profiling have increased after the 9-11 terrorist attacks against those perceived to be of Middle-Eastern background, how do scandals like this one impact how the public views this issue? If you were from a Middle-Eastern background and the victim of a hate crime or incident, would you want to report it to a police department which employs officers who behave in this fashion?
Because African-Americans and Latinos have experienced racial profiling by police officers as well, and have also been the butt of racist and stereotypical humor by law enforcement officers, they know what this is all about. They have also been the victims of hate crimes and would they want to report them to law enforcement officers who behave like those officers did in Seattle?
Here is one another example of that behavior courtesy of an email sent by an officer from the Port of Seattle Police Department.
How to get rid of illegal Mexicans
This was one that was written by Officer Erik Schmidt who through an email sent a video where a narrator "hired" six Latino men whom he called "beaners" and claims are "illegal immigrants". He pretended to take them to a workplace, but instead he drove them to the Los Angeles Immigration office and blows a whistle to draw attention to the men. The six men run off yelling "INS" and the narrator claims he does this every three weeks "just for fun".
Because of course, all "Mexicans", all people with brown skin are "illegal immigrants" and all people of color including African-Americans, Latinos and Asian-Americans are only to be labeled by the use of an assortment of racist slurs. Because of course, people of color exist only to be laughed at, or joked about, or referred to in ways that strip them of their humanity. And of course, this is all in the name of humor, including what is called "gallows humor" and fun and all that. It's part and parcel of the racist, sexist police culture at the Port of Seattle Police Department that allows and even condones police officers to use members of these racial groups in a demeaning and stereotypical fashion in order to have their fun.
Once the Port of Seattle Police Department's management woke up and discovered that it had racist and sexist police officers running amok in its midst, how did that agency respond? There's been a lot of talk in this case as there have been in all the episodes of similar misconduct which have preceded it that this is just a bunch of "rogue" officers, or "bad apples" in the midst of a stellar law enforcement agency.
Of course, with this particular agency, those dusted-off alibis and excuses won't hold up to the scrutiny of most people because in this case, there was a large percentage of its officers engaging in this behavior while hiding in plain sight. And as it turned out, at least in the department's own investigation, not much happened.
Slaps on the wrist
Deputy Police Chief Gale Evans said in lieu of the police chief who had nothing to say about the matter, that the behavior was "appalling...It won't be tolerated". But anyone following this scandal will have to keep their eyes on the situation over a period of time and see if words said to media outlets translate into meaningful actions. You have to watch what the department's leadership does when the media's attention goes away.
(excerpt)
Though some in the department recommended tougher punishment for those caught up in the current case, few of the officers involved were disciplined. Nine got written reprimands, and others who received e-mails, but didn't store or forward them, were let go without punishment.
The accused harasser, Sgt. Jon Schorsch, 39, also was found to have misused the Internet, but he resigned under threat of termination after a judge issued a protection order in the harassment case.
No one, including lieutenants and sergeants, was punished for failure to report the Internet abuse, though failure to do that is a department rule violation.
A zero-tolerance policy against this type of conduct in the workplace which the department heads insisted was in place translated mostly into written reprimands which the department said were "serious" discipline. The department promised to take much stiffer actions against its officers if this behavior ever happened again. It is most likely that it will, given enough time after this current episode, because the department has essentially issued a permission slip to officers in its police department to do it again, only next time don't get caught.
After all, when it did happen, it was treated by slapping some of the involved parties on the wrist and by giving a free pass to the supervisors who are entrusted by the agency and the public to make sure their charges behave themselves. Consequently, it probably will happen again.
What happened to the supervisors when they uncovered the misconduct or in this case received the racist and sexist emails, has been the focus of much of the city's concern. Why did they do nothing?
Maybe several supervisors didn't report the misconduct that happened in their midst because they were too busy sending the emails or laughing at the content themselves. King5.com's article, The email scandal by the numbers , stated that two lieutenant and 12 sergeants either sent, received or stored the emails, which means that about one-third of the officers involved in the scandal were supervisors. What this fact translates into is that once again, this isn't about "bad apples" running amok within the workplace email system, this is about an agency with systemic racism and sexism entrenched in its culture from top to bottom. The reality is that the department itself will be the last to figure that out and it will take even longer to admit it.
The department was also mandating anti-harassment training as part of how it will handle the situation. That's a drop in the bucket in a department with this misconduct going on in its midst.
Besides, hasn't the department already implemented anti-harassment training and policies as law enforcement agencies in most states are required to do? If so, it doesn't look like either had any positive effect in this police department. There's no point in adding more training if police officers especially supervisors in that department have just been given a pointed lesson on how they won't be held accountable for racist or sexist behavior. Who would report it next time, if there was little to no response this time?
Through slapping a few wrists and especially through failing to hold the supervisors responsible, the police department did show that this conduct would be tolerated. If anyone doubts that, just wait a few months, six months, a year and watch what happens to these officers including those who received "serious" written reprimands. Watch to see how many of them get promoted. Watch to see how many of them the department holds up as role models on an awards podium. That will make it clear in a way that mere words spoken in the heat of a breaking scandal just can't.
The proof isn't what you hear today, it's what you see tomorrow. And the day after and so on.
Seattlest.com blogged about this episode and mentioned a prior incident involving pornographic email that was uncovered but in that case, the officer was exonerated although the police chief at the time did say that this incident led to the potential of it happening again.
And then some.
Paula Zahn from CNN discussed the scandal on her show, according to the transcripts here. She had a panel of guests comment on the episode and its implications in law enforcement.
Here are some of the comments from that program.
(excerpt)
"This was active suppression. Seattle Port Authority absolutely knew exactly what was going on with its officers and sought to conceal it."
---James Bible, NAACP
Bible then asks if the Port of Seattle Police Department can treat people of color fairly in communities if they are engaging in this form of racist and sexist misconduct. That's probably the question of the hour as it should be.
It's hard to know from the police department what its answer would be because it isn't responding to the public on these issues and their measures to truly address them. On the other hand, if an agency's actions don't match its words or it chooses to remain silent, then that in itself provides some form of answer.
"Just in terms of the public trust that police officers have to the general public and I think this was somewhat of a break of confidence on our police department."
---Lloyd Hara, Commissioner, Port of Seattle
Yes indeed. Particularly among those who were the butt of racist, sexist and sexual comments, jokes, photographs and videos which were sent through workplace emails. But no matter how many times representatives of these groups that are most often demeaned and ridiculed by law enforcement officers try to explain this to those in law enforcement agencies, these agencies always either act as if it's the first time they've heard these complaints or they turn around and make fun of those who complain about it.
The Port of Seattle Commission strikes back
The Port of Seattle Commission announced in late January that it would be conducting its own investigation into the email scandal in this article by the Seattle Post Intelligencer. The body claims that it was misled by the department and that it obtained nearly all of its information on the scandal from the local press. Adding to that, was information provided by an unidentified source to the newspaper that the number of officers involved in the scandal had been grossly underestimated by the department and in actuality, it was two-thirds of the entire department which was involved. That revelation if it holds up shouldn't be all that surprising at this juncture in time.
An email from someone who claimed to be a police officer from the involved department was also received by Port Commission President John Creighton. It's very telling that the one police officer who has raised an objection to the behavior of others in this agency is keeping his name to himself. Does he or she fear harassment, being ostracized, not receiving backup when needed on the job or being the focus of reenergized internal affairs investigations?
(excerpt)
"It saddens me to say everything in those articles is true," the author said, referring to news reports in the P-I and on KING/5.
"The lieutenants and sergeants involved in the email scandal should have been demoted and suspended," the e-mail writer said. "Our only hope to begin to repair the damage done, to try and reestablish the Port Police's credibility, rests now in the Commission's hands."
The code of silence is clearly alive and well in the Port of Seattle Police Department even in the wake of the investigation of the misconduct. So nothing's really changed and it's business as usual.
This police officer if indeed this is a police officer has clearly lost faith in the mechanisms inside his or her own agency to do the job and is seeking outside assistance, something most law enforcement agencies and officers are loathe to do. As part of this new investigation, the commission will be offering whistle blower protection to any employee of the Port of Seattle Police Department who comes forward with allegations or information in relation to the email scandal.
Members of the Port Commission said that they were upset at the department's lack of disclosure regarding the scope of the scandal.
(excerpt)
"I'm pretty upset that it looks to me that something was trying to be swept under the rug," Commissioner Bob Edwards said Monday.
At any rate, it appears that the commission has little faith in the department's ability to investigate its own officers' misconduct and hold them accountable so now it's stepping up to do so itself.
Even if the sergeants weren't so upset about the emails they may or may not have been reading, they collectively sent a memo to the commission stating that they were upset with other problems involving how internal investigations and disciplinary procedures were conducted and complained that morale was low. It usually is in the wake of law enforcement scandals.
I wouldn't imagine that morale and was any higher in the communities served by this police department. The lack of trust in the communities towards the ability of the police to treat them fairly, during the times when of course they aren't sending racist and sexist emails, is probably much lower and sinking rapidly.
But if you learn anything from this sorry episode, the latest on a list of sorry episodes, it should be two things. One, is that actions speak much louder than words and on its actions is how a law enforcement agency should be judged. The other being is that as the case involving the Port of Seattle Police Department has shown, it's far too often the perception of a law enforcement agency that is perpetuated through the code of silence that matters much more than its reality.
A family who sued after their son was shot to death by a Fontana Police Department officer in 2004 settled out of court, according to the Press Enterprise.
Family receives $1 million from settlement in wrongful death case
This police department had 23 officer-involved shootings between 1996 and 2006, in a city of 175,000. One of those was this one, the fatal shooting of Randy Perchez, Jr. by Officer Richard Guerrero who shot Perchez after the man had grabbed his flashlight according to the police department which supported his actions.
However, a federal judge said that Guerrero had a background of seven excessive force investigations. The San Bernardino County District Attorney's office did not file criminal charges against Guerrero, stating that there was insufficient evidence to prove the charges within a reasonable doubt to a jury, but this office did include this shooting on a curious list it has of shootings it believed to be unjustified. There are five shootings on this list including the 2006 shooting of Elio Carrion by San Bernardino County Sheriff Deputy Ivory Webb, Jr.
Webb became the first law enforcement officer in San Bernardino County to face criminal charges in connection with an onduty shooting and is currently awaiting trial on April 23 on attempted voluntary manslaughter and weapons assault charges.
(excerpt)
"It was a very, very bad shooting," attorney John Burton said. "This shooting stands as close to an act of murder as I've ever seen."
These were the other three shootings that the District Attorney's office believed to be unjustified.
(excerpt)
Jose Luis Perea, 47, died Feb. 9, 2003, after reserve sheriff's Deputy John Monaghan, also a high-ranking Los Angeles County prosecutor, shot him in the neck while investigating a burglary report in Fontana.
County records show Perea's family settled for $450,000.
Evan Scott Smith, 25, died after Deputy Andrew Mathews responded to a 911 call July 16, 2002, that Smith was drunk, tearing up his Crestline home and threatening his wife.
Investigators said no evidence suggested that Mathews was facing imminent death or great bodily injury. Smith's family settled a lawsuit for $530,000.
Sergio Rivera survived a bullet fired by Deputy Donna Wilson on July 4, 2002, during a struggle after she and Deputy Paul Jacome responded to a Muscoy home about a domestic violence call.
Rivera filed a claim but never went forward with a lawsuit, said Ronald Owens, a San Bernardino County liability manager. No payments were ever made.
posted by Five Before Midnight | 9:37 AM
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