Before Sgt. Kevin McGee and the Virginia police department he belonged to charged a Black state senator, local civil rights leaders and city public defenders with conspiring to "injure" Confederate statues, he was being investigated by his own department for an email he sent to city officials where he slammed those he later charged, HuffPost reports.
McGee was also a prominent opponent of former Portsmouth Police Chief Tonya Chapman, according to sources speaking to HuffPost. "Chapman, Virginia’s first Black female police chief, was forced out last year, which she said was a result of her confronting 'racial tensions' from within the majority Black city’s mostly white police force and facing down a police union she said didn’t like her because she wasn’t a white man," the report stated.
The current Portsmouth police chief Angela Greene, who is also a Black woman, bypassed the city's elected Black prosecutor and charged local NAACP leaders and Portsmouth public defenders with a little known "injury" law that previously contained language sympathetic to Confederate supporters.
Sen. Lucas, like many others who were charged, weren't on the scene when protesters damaged four Confederate statues in June. One of the statues fell, severely injuring a protester. Lucas accused Greene of handling the incident poorly and called on her to resign, but McGee disagreed. In his letter, he said police falling back and allowing the incident to take place was because the statues were “a lost cause” and officers intervening would have only made the incident worse.
“Occasionally you have to let a house burn in order to save the ones on either side or because collapse is imminent,” he wrote.
“Chief Greene deserves nothing less than the highest praise and she should be given the resources to continue to rebuild this Police Department,” McGee continued. “If Senator Lucas wants to place blame on anyone for this incident, she should start by looking in the mirror.”
Two months later, McGee obtained the "unusual" felony charges against Lucas and 13 others.
Read the full report over at HuffPost.
