Philly Officers Punished Over Racist Stickers

Philly Officers Punished Over Racist Stickers

www.rawstory.com

Two racist stickers were found inside Schweizer's locker. One sticker read: "White Power." The other depicted a cartoon of a man, half as an officer in uniform and half as a Klansman, with the words "Blue By Day — White By Night."

Ramsey described the discipline as harsh but just, and said he stopped short of firing the officers because they "had no histories that would indicate that they engaged in any racist type of activities."

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Great---This is just what is needed, more fuel to the fire that cops target minorities. Pretty scary to think these guys got through all the background checks and lie detector tests to make it not only into the field, but into a narcotics task force to boot!

www.rawstory.com
(visit the link for the full news article)

And to think that I thought we had already overcome this only to be thrown right back into the same thing. =/. I wonder if this is going to cause police departments to run background checks on there officers or at least question them.

Schweizer's attorney, Allan J. Sagot, maintained that his client was the victim of a practical joke played by another officer, who affixed the stickers to the outside of Schweizer's locker. Once he saw the stickers, Schweizer pulled them off his locker and stuck them inside, Sagot said.

An Internal Affairs Bureau investigation concluded that Dial created the stickers and put them on Schweizer's locker in the narcotics strike force headquarters in the city's Bridesburg section, Ramsey said.

This is more of a case of one guy just screwing around with the other guy, and probably has nothing to do with racism. I'm sure if he placed a practical joke by switching his partners computer wallpaper with a swastika to make his partner freak out, you'd accuse him of being a Nazi too. Talk about a police state - practical jokes have to be politically correct, or else you get suspended without pay for 20 days!

Come on, I know there are some people here who have done something like that to screw with a co-worker.

Your cop hating paranoid victim agenda is strikingly clear.

As much as I hate racists, they are protected by the first amendment. You can't discriminate against someone based on personal beliefes. put him behind a desk untill you find out if he is in fact a card carrying member of the KKK or American Nazi power.

Furthermore, any Klansman or Nazi would not want to draw attention to themselves if they were also a cop, meaning he would probably not have racist stickers in his locker at the Police station. Common sense dictates this to us.

I think the punishment was severely harsh for just a couple of stickers found inside someone's personal locker, don't you? Especially since Officer Schweizer was shown by the internal affairs investigation to be a victim of a stupid prank.

An Internal Affairs Bureau investigation concluded that Dial created the stickers and put them on Schweizer's locker in the narcotics strike force headquarters in the city's Bridesburg section, Ramsey said.

Perhaps the meaning of the stickers were taken out of context. Neither man had any history of racist activity, so shouldn't they at least be given the benefit of a doubt? Why should this one instance of poor judgement destroy two otherwise unblemished careers?

[edit on 3/29/08 by LLoyd45]

It's a stupid thing to joke about, especially in Philly. Way to reinforce "no snitching" in the minds of some black people though.