So everyone's acting like San Francisco was supposed to be immune from racism and police corruption. Sorry, no:
The text messages that sparked the probe were originally uncovered in a court document. In March, prosecutors filed a motion opposing bail for former police officer Ian Furminger, who'd been sentenced on corruption-related charges. The motion listed his text messages — which included racial slurs and stereotypes about African Americans. They argued that the content of the text messages indicated he was not worthy of bail.
The text messages Furminger exchanged with people, including other San Francisco police officers, use racist statements to describe people whom we can assume to be San Francisco residents the officers were charged with serving (in response to a message saying "all ni**ers should be spayed," Furminger replied, "I just saw one an hour ago with 4 kids"), as well as other police officers ("fuckin ni**er" was his response to a colleague's promotion to sergeant).
Click here to read the disgusting racist texts.
There's a stark contrast between the racism revealed by the messages and what it suggests about how police officers operated, and the city's liberal — and, in the perceptions of many, racially tolerant — reputation.
Despite that reputation, the racial disparities in criminal justice in the city are striking. Rev. Amos Brown, a San Francisco NAACP board member, told the LA Times that African Americans make up only about 5 percent of the city's population but 60 percent to 70 percent of those in San Francisco's juvenile hall. The Examiner reported that 47 percent of people arrested between 2009 and 2014 were black.
San Francisco public defender Jeff Adachi told the LA Times that the city has "a systemic problem" with racism, saying that "this is not an isolated case of 14 officers."
This whole thing brought to mind an old Dirty Harry movie called Magnum Force:
Even Dirty Harry didn't roll with that crap. And he hated everybody.
I don't mean to make light of this with that clip.That's HOllywood and this is sickeningly real. But there was a time when the old school right wing "law and order" types like Clint Eastwood at least paid lip service to the idea that cops had to follow the law. I'm not sure that's operative anymore.
Update: Here's another good example of the right wing completely abandoning any pretense of following the rules or adhering to basic honesty:
Gov. Rick Scott, after his mother’s death in 2013, went on TV to explain his decision to drop his strongly-held opposition to President Barack Obama’s health care overhaul.
Scott said his mother’s death changed his perspective and he could no longer “in good conscience” oppose expanding health care coverage to nearly 1 million Floridians.
Scott conceded this week that was all a ruse. He now says his support for Medicaid expansion was a calculated move designed to win support from the Obama administration for the state’s proposal to hand over control of Medicaid to private insurance companies. At the time, he denied that his support was tied to a deal with the federal government.
Now that he’s succeeded in privatizing Medicaid, Scott is again railing against Medicaid expansion and is suing the federal government for allegedly forcing it on him.
By any means necessary. And I have no doubt that he will be applauded and congratulated on his wily tactical brilliance by Republicans everywhere. All's fair when you're beating back the scourge of health care for poor people.