At least 3,000 arrests in the past decade are under review in San Francisco in a widening scandal over how police officers allegedly wrote racist and homophobic text messages.
San Francisco’s top prosecutor has impaneled a trio of retired, out-of-town judges to see if bias led to wrongful prosecution or conviction in thousands of cases investigated by a total of 14 officers.
Prosecutors have already dismissed charges in some cases involving the officers, District Attorney George Gascon said Thursday at a news conference.
The judges — Cruz Reynoso, LaDoris Hazzard Cordell and Dickran Tevrizian Jr. — will also investigate whether a “deeper culture of bias” exists within the department, Gascon said. The retired judges won’t be paid, Gascon said.
San Francisco’s police chief has proposed firing eight officers implicated in the scandal, including a police captain and a sergeant, the San Francisco Chronicle reported last month. Three of the officers have resigned, the newspaper reported.
The panel of retired judges joins a task force in Gascon’s office already investigating the city police department and the county sheriff’s office after federal prosecutors revealed text messages among police officers including references to cross burnings and a suggestion that it would be OK to shoot a black person because it’s “not against the law to put an animal down.”
That task force is also investigating faulty testing at the DNA crime lab and prize-fighting of inmates in the county jail, Gascon said.
Even one wrongful prosecution is ‘one too many’
Source: At Least 3,000 San Francisco Arrests Under Review After Officers’ Slur-Filled Texts Revealed
