On January 6th — in addition to avowed white supremacy and conspiracy groups — a number of firefighters, police officers, and military reservists joined the mob storming the nation’s Capitol building. In some cases they severely beat fellow law enforcement officers, in other cases flashed police credentials to gain unlawful entry into the Capitol. Law enforcement agencies around the country conducted internal investigations, and some officers have already been fired.
Yet neither the New Bedford Police, the Bristol County Sheriff’s Department, nor the Dartmouth Police Department conducted internal investigations into officers who might have participated in the insurrection. The New Bedford Mayor’s office referred inquires about investigations to the FBI. Chief Cordeiro told a Zoom meeting much the same. A Dartmouth Police spokeswoman said that “at this time” there was no investigation. The Bristol County Sheriff’s Office simply refused to answer our question.
The most charitable explanation is that local law enforcement agencies are waiting to see if the FBI turns up anything. A less charitable, but far more likely, explanation is that police and sheriff’s department are showing their usual disinterest in investigating their own, even for crimes that would permanently disqualify them from serving in any law enforcement capacity ever again. Unfortunately, the public has come to expect responses like this from police agencies that operate with increasing impunity.
Historically, the nation’s sheriffs have been closely identified with slave patrols and white supremacy. Our own local sheriff is a spokesman for the white supremacist anti-immigrant group FAIR, state campaign chair for America’s first openly white supremacist President, and spent considerable time attempting to ingratiate himself with white supremacist presidential immigration advisor Stephen Miller, as information requests by the ACLU, Political Research Associates, the Southern Poverty Law Center, and others reveal. Sheriffs have a long history of racist impunity, as many remember from the Jim Crow era. Since those days, sadly, not enough has changed.
The nation’s police forces are part of a criminal justice system that Elizabeth Warren took heat for calling “racist, top to bottom.” It ought to be unnecessary to point out, especially after George Floyd’s murder, that police forces, especially, have major problems with disproportionate killings, arrests, and assaults on people of color. But then there are the white supremacist chat rooms — from Facebook, Twitter, Gab, and Parler, to Stormfront and others — where a disproportionate number of participants are law enforcement or members of the military.
A 2019 investigation by the Center for Investigative Reporting found that hundreds of police were members of neo-Confederate, militia, or white supremacist Facebook groups. The Plain View Project created a database of Facebook posts from self-identified police officers in just eight of America’s 350 cities and found tens of thousands of racist posts by police officers endorsing racial violence and bigotry. What would they have found in the nation’s 15,000+ small towns and in the remaining 342 cities?
In 2010 New Bedford Police officer Paul Hodson encountered a disturbed Guatemalan man and, within three minutes, had killed him by first pepper-spraying him and then kneeling on his back. Hodson, who was only removed from the NBPD after being convicted of child pornography charges, was known to post racist content on social media. The Standard Times printed some of his tame contributions: “After having a great time over the past 2 days spending time with friends and family, its back to work to deal with the scum of the earth,” he posted in 2011. “Time to go to work and violate some civil rights.”
Police forces historically do nothing about racism in the ranks. In the 1990’s a white supremacist gang, the “Vikings,” operated with impunity right under the noses of the brass of the Los Angeles Police Department. Klan affiliations of police and sheriffs were well-known during the Civil Rights years, and police today continue the tradition of breaking Black heads by treating Black Lives Matter activists as terrorists for simply demanding accountability or posting fantasies about running protestors over with their cruisers.
And if you think New Bedford is different from other communities, think again.
Former Bristol County Sheriff’s detective Peter Larkin, who went to work for the New Bedford Schools, was fired in 2019 for posting his own disturbed racist fantasy on Facebook. Angry at Black Lives Matter people protesting in New York City, Larkin wrote, “I would roll tanks and bulldozers. Mush any human in the way. Shoot everyone else. Pile up the bodies and burn them on national tv.” Is this an example of a someone who needs psychological help – or was Larkin simply posturing for fellow ex-cops who drink from the same racist cup?
Whatever the causes — hiring the wrong people or habitually refusing to hold “bad apples” accountable — police racism is both systemic and a self-inflicted societal wound that only radical reform and public control can fix.
The events of January 6th, which far too many law enforcement officers particpated in, provides one more example of why public oversight of police is crucial. Police simply can’t be trusted to investigate themselves. And why would any sensible person even expect them to?
If local law enforcement officers are found to have participated in the January 6th insurrection, they must be immediately dismissed, stripped of their pensions, and never permitted to betray the Constitution or the public trust again. But since local law enforcement agencies won’t do it themselves, let municipalities investigate. If municipalities won’t do it, then let the state Attorney General conduct credible investigations.
The time for taking white supremacy within the ranks of law enforcement seriously is long overdue.
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