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(CNN)Three Florida police officers were fired and a fourth resigned after exchanging a series of racially offensive text messages and a video that portrayed President Barack Obama in a derogatory way, Fort Lauderdale police said.
Jason Holding, James Wells and Christopher Sousa were terminated after a five-month internal affairs investigation found sustained department misconduct, conduct unbecoming of a police officer and engaging in "conduct prejudicial to the good of the order of the police department."
A fourth officer, Alex Alvarez, resigned but authorities said Friday that he would have been fired had he not done so.
In the text message exchanges, the former officers used racially derogatory terms to refer to people they encountered while on duty, included racially insensitive material from the film, "Django Unchained," and talked about getting drunk and "killing n*****," according to investigative documents.
The men allegedly criticized co-workers, including African-Americans, making crude comments about their grammar, appearance and work ethic. One message referred to an entire shift as "lazy f****," the documents state.
edition.cnn.com...
originally posted by: StoutBroux
Apparently they didn't get the memo that we're all being watched....and read....and listened to. Yay that they're gone because we don't need cops or anyone else for that matter with those attitudes, but who was monitoring their text messages? And why? Were they on private devices? Why did the cops think this behavior was ok? Too many questions.
originally posted by: supamoto
Ok I'm sure some are going to flame me for saying this.
I don't mean to be offensive here.....
But if these messages were sent out of work time & on private not police phones why is it anyones business?
Are people not allowed to reflect on their daily lives anymore & amongst like minded workmates?
I'm not condoning what they said but I do think that people should be allowed to express their true feelings about things (work in this case), amongst like minded friends/colleagues.
Maybe the Police had to repond because Obummer was ridiculed in their messages.
originally posted by: Pimpish
a reply to: supamoto
Well, even if that's the case, if those are their true feelings then they need to be removed from the job anyway. They worked in a neighborhood that was predominantly black.
Further, when you have the power to hand out tickets, put people in jail, end people's lives, you need to be held to a higher standard, so yes, if they're racist it certainly makes a difference. If these were just some guys who worked at Pizza Hut and this got out they would probably be fired, simply because it would be bad for PR, and just about the worst they could do would be to do something nasty to your food.
originally posted by: TonyS
originally posted by: Pimpish
a reply to: supamoto
Well, even if that's the case, if those are their true feelings then they need to be removed from the job anyway. They worked in a neighborhood that was predominantly black.
Further, when you have the power to hand out tickets, put people in jail, end people's lives, you need to be held to a higher standard, so yes, if they're racist it certainly makes a difference. If these were just some guys who worked at Pizza Hut and this got out they would probably be fired, simply because it would be bad for PR, and just about the worst they could do would be to do something nasty to your food.
So...they're racists. From what I understand its accepted that all white people are racists...so that being the case, why do they have white cops working a predominately black neighborhood?
In the big city I used to live in, they long ago solved this problem. They early retired the whole police department and then lowered the standards for being a cop and replaced the formerly largely white police force with black and Hispanic cops. Then they assigned the black cops to the black neighborhoods and the white neighborhoods and the Hispanic cops to the Hispanic neighborhoods. They haven't had any problems with this arrangement, except of course the crime rate went up and the response times doubled. But we haven't heard any complaints.