4/26/2016 Newly released bigoted texts from San Francisco police call cases into question | US news | The Guardian

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Newly released bigoted texts from San Francisco police call cases into questionOfficials to reevaluate evidence presented in 207 criminal cases after three officers repeatedly used racist, homophobic and transphobic slurs in messages

Channing Josephin San FranciscoTuesday 26 April 201619.02 EDT

Widening a scandal that has marred San Francisco’s reputation as one of America’s most liberal cities, the city’s public defender said Tuesday that a newly released series of text messagesexchanged by three police officers in 2014 and 2015 will force city officials to take a second look at more than 200 criminal cases, including three murders.

In the more than 100 new text messages made public on Tuesday, one of the former officers, Jason Lai, repeatedly used racist, homophobic and transphobic slurs like “nigga”, “fag” and“tranny” to refer to San Francisco residents. He also makes offensive remarks about president Barack Obama and NBA player LeBron James.

“Do you know what Obama coffee is?” Lai wrote in an apparent joke. “Black and weak!”

In one message, Lai wrote: “Indian people are disgusting.” In another, he said of black people: “They are like a pack of animals on the loose.”

In addition to Lai, two other officers, Curtis Liu and Keith Ybarreta, are also named in the scandal, which will now force officials to reevaluate the evidence presented in a total of 207 criminalcases, ranging from misdemeanor drug possession to murder.

The revelation of the contents of the text messages is just the latest blow for the embattled police department, which has faced ongoing protests since the fatal police shooting of Mario Woodslast winter.

Jeff Adachi, San Francisco’s public defender, made the announcement after the district attorney’s office sent him Lai’s text messages last Friday as part of the discovery process for a robberycase that Lai had been called to investigate.

“It would be naive to believe these officers’ bigotry was reserved solely for text messages,” Adachi said in a statement. “It is a window into the biases they harbored. It likely influenced whothey stopped, who they searched, who they arrested, and how they testified in criminal trials.”

He added: “It is chilling how casually former officer Lai dehumanizes the citizens he was sworn to serve. He wished violence upon the very people he was being paid to protect and none of hiscolleagues turned him in.”

Tamara Barak Aparton, a spokeswoman for Adachi, said Tuesday, “The next step for us is to review all of these cases and contact the clients and attorneys that handled them.”

She also hopes to put pressure on the district attorney’s office to release the text messages for the other two named officers because “now their convictions and current cases are suspect”. Butgiven the gravity and widespread nature of the problem, even the district attorney admits that “fundamental change” is necessary to keep bigoted officers off the force.

“The majority of our officers serve with distinction, but far too many officers have demonstrated racist and homophobic views to suggest these are isolated incidents rather than indicative of alarger cultural problem,” district attorney George Gascón said in an e-mail.

Martin Halloran, president of the San Francisco Police Officers Association, said in a statement: “These racist text messages turn my stomach. The officers involved in this have disgraced our

4/26/2016 Newly released bigoted texts from San Francisco police call cases into question | US news | The Guardian

http://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2016/apr/26/san-francisco-police-officers-racist-text-messages-jason-lai 2/2

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profession and they must be held accountable. Our union celebrates representing the most diverse body of police officers in the nation. These individuals have no place in our ranks.”

Thousands of text messages are being reviewed by Gascón’s office in both texting scandals. The text messages released Tuesday were initially discovered during a rape inquiry into Lai. Thoughno rape charges were filed in the case, Lai was eventually charged last month with two misdemeanor counts of unlawful possession of criminal history information and four misdemeanorcounts of misuse of confidential department of motor vehicles information. He is free on bail.

This case is the second text message scandal to hit the San Francisco police department in just the past few years. A previous one involving 14 officers sending bigoted messages in 2011 and2012 was revealed in court filings for a federal corruption trial.

The US Department of Justice is reviewing, at the request of the city’s police chief and mayor, the police department’s use of force policies and potential racial bias. But the non-binding processis not enough for many public officials, who have called on the DoJ’s civil rights division to carry out an inquiry similar to those seen in Ferguson and Cleveland.

“It’s time for officers to speak up when their colleagues exhibit this kind of bigotry,” Adachi said. “It is corroding community trust and making it harder for good officers to do their jobs.”

A request for comment from Lai’s attorney, Don Nobles, was not immediately answered.

Julia Carrie Wong contributed to this report.