A Bay Area civil rights attorney who represents more than a dozen plaintiffs in lawsuits against the Antioch Police Department has asked the U.S. Department of Justice to open an investigation into the police department, calling its officers a “clear and present danger” to the city’s residents.
In a letter sent to Assistant U.S. Attorney General Kristen M. Clarke and U.S. Attorney for the Northern District of California Ismail J. Ramsey, attorney John Burris accused officers of engaging in “racially biased policing over a sustained period of years.”
Burris said his law group already has filed two federal civil rights lawsuits representing 13 plaintiffs, each of whom have alleged violations against the police department. Burris said he and attorney Ben Nisenbaum have interviewed 150 people who could become plaintiffs in later lawsuits, he wrote in the letter sent last week.
Burris called the behavior “a sustained pattern and practice of pervasive discriminatory unconstitutional policing against Black and Brown people.”
“The bias manifested itself in the officers’ interactions with their citizens of color,” he wrote. “Many of whom were wrongly detained, arrested, physically beaten, illegally searched, subjected to intimidation, kidnapping, falsifying reports, physical and canine assaults and verbally abused, as well as disrespected. The police officers also expressed antisemitic and homophobic attitudes in their text messages.”
Burris and Nisenbaum said they want the DOJ to institute a consent decree against the department, which would force the department to adhere to new policies and procedures. The attorneys also say they want federal oversight of the department, similar to ongoing oversight of the Oakland Police Department.
His letter cites multiple articles by this newspaper about racist and homophobic text messages sent among officers. The latest batch of texts obtained by the Bay Area News Group — which contained 128 pages of offensive communications between officers — shows officers discussed targeting Black and Latino people during the course of their jobs.
The texts also made light of a Black man being fatally shot hours earlier; called a Middle Eastern man a “terrorist” just minutes after arresting him; and referred to their outgoing police chief — Steven Ford, who is Black — as a “gorilla.”
Ford’s final day is Friday. He took over after Tammany Brooks, the department’s chief at the time of most of the texts, left to become the deputy police chief for the Boise Police Department in Idaho.
Meanwhile, at least a dozen Antioch and Pittsburg police officers are under criminal investigation by the FBI and Contra Costa District Attorney’s Office. That investigation led to the discovery of the racist texts.
Nearly half of the 90-member police force is on some form of leave, while the department has been hit with federal lawsuits, a civil rights investigation by the California Attorney General and an ongoing conviction integrity probe that has, thus far, resulted in dozens of felony charges being overturned in federal and state court.
“There is no evidence that the then-chief, nor his command staff made any discernible efforts to bring these officers under control,” Burris wrote in the letter. “Unfortunately, it seems that the command staff either supported the officers conduct and attitudes or turned a ‘blind eye’ to the conduct. Either way, their conduct implicitly or explicitly contributed to these officers violating the constitutional rights of the citizens of Antioch.”
Staff writers Nate Gartrell and Jakob Rodgers contributed to this story.