Las Vegas Review-Journal (Sunday)
White police chief ’s Facebook post still divides
Debate over racism, political correctness rages on after firing
JONESVILLE, La. — Sunday sermons had just ended when residents of this river town learned that a black gunman had killed three police officers in Baton Rouge. Before the news could sink in, a profane message appeared on Facebook.
“Hey Mr. Bulls—- president,” it began. “When are you going to grow a f—-ing pair. And tell it like it is. These are terrorist. That have declared f—ing war on my brother. (White police officers) enough is enough.”
The author was Skylar Dore, Jonesville’s white chief of police.
The post instantly cleaved the community in two. Many black residents, who make up 70 percent of Jonesville, saw it as a racist rant. Some whites defended Dore, saying he had the right to speak his mind. Two days later, the majority-black town council fired the young chief.
If his post had stirred anger, then his firing provoked outrage. Dore received encouragement, even employment offers, from across the country. But he also received death threats. When a friend organized a march on Dore’s behalf, the sheriff persuaded him to call it off for fear it could turn into a shootout.
Today, Jonesville remains on edge. Some whites think the town’s black officials are putting political correctness ahead of public safety. Some blacks see ugly hints of the racial violence that has long haunted the Deep South in Dore’s profane post and the online debates that followed.
Dore contends he is not a racist. He says he is fighting for his First Amendment rights.
“I was upset with the president. Quite frankly, I still am,” he said, saying President Barack Obama failed to act aggressively against black nationalist “terrorists,” such as the Baton Rouge shooter, Gavin Long. “I’m a police officer. I’m a chief. But I’m also an American citizen, and I have just as much rights as any other American citizen.”
His critics, however, say Dore’s post not only exposed his racist views but also raised questions about his past, including ones tied to unsubstantiated allegations that he caused the death of a black man in custody.
“This has brought out the real intentions of people, what they really think and really feel,” said Sharon Stevenson, a black resident who led the campaign to fire Dore. “The mask has come off.”
RISE TO CHIEF
The town of 2,200 has shrunk — by half since a clothing plant closed in the late 1980s.
“There’s nothing here. There’s no jobs,” said Dore, who runs FleX Fitness, the town’s only gym.
Dore grew up in New Iberia, the heart of Cajun country, and said tragedy in his youth pushed him to become a cop. First, his older brother was killed by a drunken driver. Then his mother drowned in an auto accident that Dore insists is an unsolved murder.
Dore took a job at the Iberia Parish jail, then became a police officer in the nearby town of Baldwin. In May 2012, Dore was leading Damon Abraham to a holding cell when Abraham, a black man wanted for failure to appear in court, bolted. Dore chased him through the streets and into the woods, where he used a stun gun on Abraham at least twice. Back in the jail, Abraham stopped breathing. Dore performed CPR, but Abraham died.
In a letter to the U.S. Justice Department, Abraham’s family called it a “clear-cut murder of an innocent man.”
But Louisiana State Police found no probable cause to arrest Dore.
Two months later, Jonesville hired Dore as a police officer. Last year, financial trouble forced the town to gut its police department. Dore went from being one of 14 full-time officers to being in charge of just two.
At 30, he was chief of police.
DALLAS, THEN BATON ROUGE
Dore was vacationing in Florida with his wife, who serves as the town judge, and his stepdaughter when he heard about the Baton Rouge shooting. Already upset about the slaying of five officers 10 days earlier in Dallas, he was devastated to learn that Matthew Gerald, with whom Dore had trained, was among the dead in Baton Rouge.
Dore immediately took to Facebook. “How many police officers have to die trying to protect the citizens of this country,” he fumed. “Any other president would have declared full on war on this group. Since when in our f—-ing history do we stand idle to the ambush murders of law enforcement. It has to STOP NOW !!!!! ”
On the drive back to Louisiana, Dore’s phone began ringing. His post was spreading quickly. People in Jonesville and beyond were accusing him of racism.
Dore said that he was quoting Long, the Baton Rouge shooter, when he wrote “white police officers.” And that the “group” he mentioned was not the activist group Black Lives Matter but black sovereign citizens, the sometimes-violent separatist organization of which Long claimed to be a follower.
TOWN’S PAST PLAYS ROLE
Sharon Stevenson watched in horror as Dore’s post tore through Jonesville. She had learned about it from her youngest son, who worked out at Dore’s gym. That the post came from a man her son considered “cool” made it all the more shocking.
“It was terrifying,” she said. “I said, ‘He is going to set a fire in this little town.’”
Decades earlier, Stevenson, 56, had been one of the first black employees in the local welfare office. Whites here resisted desegregation, and the community had brushes with Ku Klux Klan violence, including the 1964 firebombing of a church not far from town.
Hiram Evans remembers seeing crosses burn. Now the first black mayor of Jonesville, Evans said he was “bewildered and surprised” when Stevenson called about Dore. Evans had taken a chance on the young white officer after the Baldwin incident. Now he wondered: Had he hired a racist?
Two days later, the mayor summoned Dore to a public hearing. Stevenson and two other women called for Dore to step down, saying the black community could no longer trust him.
Dore offered an apology but refused to resign, and the council voted to fire him.