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San Francisco police officers to attend harassment training after racist, derogatory texts

By Daniel Uria
San Francisco Police Chief Gregory P. Suhr released a series of derogatory text messages sent within the department and ordered that all officers complete anti-bias and harassment prevention training among other reforms. Two officers involved in sending the messages retired while a third chose to resign. 
 Screen capture/CBS San Francisco/Inform Inc.
San Francisco Police Chief Gregory P. Suhr released a series of derogatory text messages sent within the department and ordered that all officers complete anti-bias and harassment prevention training among other reforms. Two officers involved in sending the messages retired while a third chose to resign. Screen capture/CBS San Francisco/Inform Inc.

SAN FRANCISCO, April 30 (UPI) -- San Francisco Police Chief Gregory P. Suhr announced all officers on the force would be required to complete anti-bias and harassment prevention training in the wake of a sexual-assault investigation that revealed a number of derogatory text messages sent within the department.

During a press conference on Friday Suhr spoke about the texts allegedly exchanged between Officer Jason Lai, former Lt. Curtis Liu and two other former officers, which included disparaging comments against black, Latino, Asian, Muslim, gay and transgender people.

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"These ugly, bigoted text and images are difficult to look at," he said. "We are committed to cutting out this cancer of intolerance."

Suhr said that in addition to requiring the two-hour harassment and discrimination training, the department will also equip all patrol officers with body cameras by the end of 2016 and change the bi-annual-firearms qualifications from a two-hour range and firearms course to an eight-hour series of classroom sessions including de-escalation and crisis intervention team training.

He said the department would also continue to expand recruiting and encourage applications from people of different ethnic and racial backgrounds.

San Francisco's public defender Jeff Adachi said the text messages were highly consequential and "evidence a deep culture of racial hatred" within the police department.

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"These are people who have the power to arrest and the power to kill somebody," Adachi said. "If you're thinking, 'This is a wild animal or this is a crazed black man who's going to hurt me,' that's when you might pull the trigger. That's where it becomes scary."

In 2015, 14 officers were accused of sending derogatory text messages to each other. In that case, Suhr filed to have seven of the officers fired, but a Supreme Court judge rejected the request after the statute of limitation had expired.

Two of the officers involved in the most recent case resigned, while a third chose to retire.

"These despicable text messages make clear that these former officers were not fit to serve our city and would not have met the current standards for hiring to have even become police officers in the first place," Suhr said.

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