The Department of Justice introduced on Friday it has resolved a biased policing investigation of California’s Antioch Police Department, the place racist texts allegedly despatched by officers sparked outrage and blowback.
The metropolis and its police have agreed to rent a guide to evaluation its insurance policies, its officer coaching, and its use-of-force incidents to counsel enhancements, the Justice Department mentioned in an announcement.
The events agreed to a framework for federal monitoring, to the institution of a stronger accountability position for its oversight physique, and to the gathering of knowledge on the division’s interactions for 5 years, it mentioned.
“In working with the Justice Department to institute policing reform, Antioch Police Department sends a powerful message that the discrimination and misconduct that prompted this investigation is not going to be tolerated,” Assistant Attorney General Kristen Clarke of the Justice Department’s Civil Rights Division mentioned in Friday’s announcement.
The Antioch Police Department mentioned Friday that it welcomes the settlement because it continues to cooperate with a separate California Department of Justice investigation of biased policing.
“The actions that prompted this investigation have been unacceptable and failures occurred,” the police division mentioned in its assertion. “We will implement and improve complete insurance policies, practices, coaching packages, group engagement initiatives, and oversight mechanisms to make sure that officers uphold integrity and equity whereas addressing misconduct swiftly and successfully.”
The Justice Department mentioned its investigation was sparked by racist texts allegedly exchanged by officers from late 2019 to early 2022, which included homophobic and racist slurs and one suggestion {that a} “much less deadly” weapon be used on the town’s mayor, who’s Black and in his fifth 12 months as the highest chief of Antioch.
Texts allegedly included bragging about beating suspects and manufacturing proof, based on a 2023 report compiled by the Contra Costa County District Attorney’s Office after it and the FBI investigated the racist texts.
The DA’s workplace report impressed the Justice Department’s personal investigation in June 2023, it mentioned.
The Antioch Police Officers Association, which represents sworn, rank-and-file workers in metropolis contract negotiations, didn’t instantly reply to a request for remark.
Antioch, a metropolis of greater than 117,000 about 50 miles northeast of San Francisco, is greater than 2/3 non-white, greater than 1/3 Hispanic or Latino, and about 1/5 Black, based on U.S. Census Bureau knowledge.
After the DA’s workplace report was launched below the order of a neighborhood choose, outrage erupted and civil rights lawsuits have been filed.
An arson and mutilation case in opposition to two males charged in reference to the invention of the burned physique of Mykaella Sharlman, 25, was dropped in 2023 after the texts have been revealed. Prosecutors mentioned the prosecution’s reliance on officers concerned within the scandal would not survive a jury’s scrutiny.
“The Contra Costa District Attorney’s Office now not has confidence within the integrity of this prosecution,” it mentioned in an announcement in 2023.
Sister Nicole Eason mentioned the officers’ texts should not have had such an have an effect on and instructed Sharlman’s household was able to take the matter to civil court docket. Prosecutors mentioned they have been looking for different methods — apart from counting on the officers, who weren’t recognized — to resolve the case. No civil instances seem to have been filed in Contra Costa County in reference to Sharlman’s loss of life.
Four individuals who say their civil rights have been violated by Antioch cops and a fifth whose father was fatally shot by officers introduced a federal lawsuit in opposition to the town in April 2023. The civil motion was ongoing, although a couple of events have settled their claims, based on court docket data.
Eight officers within the texting report have been positioned on administrative depart, three have been indicted by a federal grand jury for conspiring to “injure, oppress, threaten and intimidate” residents, and a type of three resigned. Efforts to achieve the three have been unsuccessful on the time of the indictment in 2023.
Michael Rains, a lawyer who represented a number of the officers concerned within the texting talked about within the report, mentioned in 2023 that the variety of officers concerned within the texting was low.
“Suggestions in lots of media accounts that inappropriate textual content messaging was widespread … was merely not the case,” he mentioned on the time.
Rains didn’t instantly reply to a request for remark Friday evening concerning the Justice Department’s decision.