Hundreds of criminal cases investigated by San Francisco police officers could soon be in jeopardy thanks to a widening scandal involving bigoted text messages exchanged between members of the city's police department.
On Thursday, District Attorney George Gascón confirmed that several more officers have been implicated in the growing controversy, having sent "a substantial number of homophobic and racist text messages" between them. The conversations were serious in nature, he added, and included casual use of the N-word as well as various other racial and homophobic slurs.
In addition to the comments, the officers were found mocking a previous texting scandal that involved racist texts sent by San Francisco officers between 2011 and 2012. The latest messages were sent between 2014 and 2015 and were discovered while investigators were probing those earlier incidents.
“This problem is more systemic and it needs to be addressed in a more deeper fashion,” said Gascón, who formed a panel to investigate allegations of racism following the first batch of text messages. He further faulted the police department for not notifying his office about the second batch of exchanges earlier, but Police Chief Greg Suhr took issue with that allegation, saying Gascón was notified last year.
The San Francisco Police Officers Union issued a statement Thursday, condemning the officers' "appalling racist behavior," saying they had "disgraced the uniform and their profession.” San Francisco Public Defender Jeff Adach, meanwhile, confirmed that his office will begin reviewing any criminal cases that the implicated officers may have participated in.
Read more about the growing scandal here.
Image Credit: Flickr User melinamanfrinatti, https://flic.kr/p/dMz8Qc via (CC BY-SA 2.0)