Text messages sent by police in Antioch, California, that were revealed earlier this month show officers engaged for years in racist and brutal conduct and openly talked about committing brutal acts – and they should sound the death knell for the police chief, according to an opinion piece in the Daily Beast.
Instead, Tammany Brooks is now deputy commander of a department in a different state.
"To read the court papers is to wonder how the hell Brooks is still in law enforcement, much less second in command of the police department in Idaho’s capital city," Michael Daly wrote in The Beast.
He continued: "Much has been made about the “blue wall of silence.” This was more a cloak of indifference."
The Mercury News reported that officers made racist jokes about offering a "prime rib dinner" to anyone who shot the city's Black Mayor Lamar Thorpe with non-lethal projectiles. They also boasted about violence they inflicted on others and complained that they didn't go further. In one text, Antioch Officer Eric Rombough lamented that the injuries he inflicted on a suspect wouldn't be as visible as he had hoped.
Multiple officers referred to Black people as "gorillas,” “monkeys” and “water buffalo," and one officer boasted that he could use the N-word in group texts without any fear of being reprimanded.
According to a new report from The Daily Beast, the behavior took place right under the nose of Brooks. The texts and the accompanying allegations are included in a civil suit filed last week against Brooks and seven past and present Antioch cops.
The suit, filed by people who say they suffered “malicious treatment” at the hands of Antioch Police, alleges that Brooks “was aware of the openly racist conduct” and “use of excessive force” by officers under his command when he served as chief of police from 2017 to 2021. The suit also alleges that Brooks “failed to take any remedial measures and tolerated, encouraged, and ratified the repeated and widespread pattern and practice of unconstitutional actions.”
The suit says Brooks and other officials “approved, ratified, condoned, encouraged, sought to cover up, and/or tacitly authorized” the racist abuse.
Brooks nevertheless went on to become deputy police chief in Boise, Idaho despite two reports that document the texts during his time as Antioch Police chief.
Read the full report over at The Daily Beast.