Buffalo police captain suspended without pay for racist rant against Black officers

Capt. Amber Beyer stands accused in a federal lawsuit of making racist comments in front of two Black police officers and a Black mental health clinician, the Post, a nonprofit news organization in Western New York, reported. Buffalo police confirmed the suspension Saturday.

Here are some of the statements that Beyer allegedly made, according to the Post:

• Black officers are more likely to be unfaithful to their spouses than white officers.
• All the male Black officers she knew cheated on their wives.
• White police officers suffer post-traumatic stress disorder from working in Black neighborhoods, but Black officers do not, because they were more accustomed to violent crime.
• Black officers should try to understand how Black people’s criminality justified some racism on the part of whites.
• She’d be suspicious if she saw a Black man in her neighborhood.

The allegations are especially striking in light of Beyer’s position in the department, which was reported today by the Buffalo News:

“Beyer is the coordinator of the Buffalo Police Department's Crisis Intervention Team and had been the supervisor of the Behavioral Health Team, which pairs police officers with mental health clinicians to respond to calls regarding people's mental health crises.

Beyer was investigated twice by Internal Affairs, once in May and then in the fall.”

And there was more from the lawsuit, according to the newspaper:

“Beyer, who is white, read aloud a Facebook post from a resident who was mentally ill and whom the behavioral team was to check on. In the post, the resident freely used a racial slur that targets Black people and Beyer yelled out the word as she read the post to members of her team.

“The lawsuit also alleged that in an earlier incident in May, Beyer made a series of inflammatory statements after she was shown a viral video of an incident involving police in another jurisdiction. Two white officers pulled over a Black officer who was wearing his uniform but driving an unmarked car. The video was circulating as an example of racial profiling.”