Cops used blackface undercover in 1993; now they apologize

They used chopped-up chalk as fake crack cocaine and cloaked their white skin in blackface makeup.

Then the two undercover narcotics officers hit the streets of Baton Rouge, hoping to fool interested drug buyers in the predominantly black neighborhood into believing they were dealers.

“Not only do they not know we’re cops — they don’t even know we’re white!” then-Detective Frankie Caruso told the Advocate newspaper in 1993, the year the undercover blackface operation took place.

Now, 26 years later, the Baton Rouge Police Department is apologizing for the tactics after a police yearbook photo of the two disguised cops surfaced, marking the latest blackface scandal to ensnare authority figures and the first this year involving undercover police. In the photo’s caption, the cops were called the “soul brothers.” One threw up apparent gang signs.

Baton Rouge Police Chief Murphy Paul confirmed in a statement Monday that the photo of the officers depicts a “department-approved operation” in February 1993. The photo was first published by the Rouge Collection, a local news site.

“Blackface photographs are inappropriate and offensive. They were inappropriate then and are inappropriate today,” said Paul, who is black. “The Baton Rouge Police Department would like to apologize to our citizens and to anyone who may have been offended by the photographs.”