Ethics

Nah, There's No Racism in Boston Police

By Ed Brayton

I would have bet big money when this whole Gates arrest situation took place that there are cops out there not only siding with the officer, but also making all kinds of racist remarks about Gates and revealing their own bigotry. And in this day and age, it was inevitable that one or two of them would get caught doing it, either on tape or on a blog somewhere. Bingo.

An officer in the Boston Police Department was suspended yesterday for allegedly writing a racially charged e-mail about Harvard professor Henry Louis Gates Jr. to colleagues at the National Guard, a law enforcement official said. Mayor Thomas M. Menino compared the officer to a cancer and said he is "gone, g-o-n-e'' from the force.

The law enforcement official, speaking on the condition of anonymity, said Officer Justin Barrett referred to the black scholar as a " jungle monkey" in the letter, written in reaction to media coverage of Gates's arrest July 16.

Full post as published by Dispatches from the Culture Wars on July 30, 2009 (boomark / email).