San Jose officers on leave after racist online posts

Four San Jose police officers have been placed on administrative leave after an anonymous blogger exposed racist Facebook comments by members of the city law enforcement community.

The disclosure, which sparked wide condemnations by law enforcement officials and politicians, came a month after San Jose police officers clashed with crowds protesting police violence against Black people. While no names were released, department officials confirmed Saturday that “four officers have been placed on administrative leave.” The comments were published Friday on Medium by an anonymous writer who wanted to expose a culture of “hate, prejudice and racism” in the San Jose law enforcement community, the author wrote.

According to the article, the Facebook posts — some shared on public pages and others in a secret forum, and many of which have since been deleted — were written by retired and active San Jose police officers. Responding to the disclosure, the city’s mayor, chief of police and police union president all said the social media slurs were unacceptable.

Paul Kelly, president of the San Jose Police Officers Association, called the closed Facebook group “an online ring of hate” and said he would take swift action against any union member who participated in it.

“There is zero room in our department or our profession for racists, bigots or those that enable them,” Kelly said in a video statement released to the media. San Jose Mayor Sam Liccardo said in a statement that any officers found to have expressed “racist, antiMuslim or menacing comments” will be fired, and a representative of the San Jose Police Department told The Chronicle that it is conducting an internal investigation.

Police Chief Eddie Garcia said in a statement that while he has “no control over what former employees post online,” any current officer posting bigoted comments will be held accountable.

In one of the public Facebook posts flagged in the Medium article, a man said to be a retired San Jose cop railed against Black Lives Matter protesters as “racist useful idiots” and “domestic enemies,” while another Facebook user, allegedly an active San Jose police officer, commented that “black lives don’t really matter.”

Meanwhile, in the secret Facebook group, dubbed “10–7ODSJ,” current and former police mocked Muslims and advocated violence against them, the article reported.

One member of the forum — allegedly the same person who called protesters “domestic enemies” — posted a news article about a Muslim woman who sued the Ventura County Sheriff ’s Department after deputies pulled off her headscarf.

“Your hijab is primarily a political statement as opposed to merely a religious symbol,” the member wrote. “Therefore you have no case.”

“Hell, I would have pulled it over her face,” another member of the secret group responded.

“I say repurpose the hijabs into nooses,” a third chimed in, adding a smileyface emoji.

The Medium article was posted the same day Liccardo announced a ninepoint plan to reform the city’s police department. The plan would ban the use of rubber bullets, make it harder for fired cops to get their jobs back through arbitration and strengthen oversight of police misconduct and useofforce incidents.

The controversy over the posts comes after a tense few weeks in San Jose, where protesters flooded the streets in outrage over the death of George Floyd at the hands of Minneapolis police. Police said protesters threw rocks and bottles, while cell phone videos showed police using tear gas and rubber bullets to disperse apparently peaceful crowds.

At the time, Garcia partly defended the conduct of police during the protests, saying he saw officers “responding admirably to a chaotic situation” and also noticed “areas where we must improve and make changes.” The police chief made changes in department policy, limiting the use of “projectile impact weapons” in crowds and making it clear that officers have a moral duty to intercede if they see their fellow officers using excessive force.

This isn’t the first time that social media posts by San Jose police have spawned a public outcry.

During a 2014 Twitter exchange about Black Lives Matter demonstrations, San Jose police officer Phillip White wrote, among other combative tweets, “If anyone feels they can’t breathe or their lives matter, I’ll be at the movies tonight, off duty, carrying my gun.”

After the tweets emerged, White was put on paid leave before being fired by the department in 2015. But he got his job back the next year when an independent arbitrator decided that the punishment was too severe and did not reflect his long record of service, the Mercury News reported.

Liccardo referenced the White controversy in a tweet Saturday, saying that after the city fired the officer, “an unaccountable, unreviewable arbitrator restored his badge,” Liccardo wrote. “That’s why reform #1 of my plan focuses on reforming arbitration.”