Blog note: This article refers to a Humboldt County grand jury report
Police
officers from Eureka, Calif., sent text messages with vulgar comments about
homeless and mentally ill people, advocated for violence and demeaned women.
The
vulgar, explicit text messages between a squad at the Eureka Police Department
took a violent turn on April 20, 2020, after a suspect posted bail and walked
out of jail.
The
man had been arrested with an arsenal of loaded guns, a silencer and other
equipment, including body armor that had belonged to the group’s supervisor,
Sgt. Rodrigo Reyna-Sanchez. The sergeant exploded in the group chat.
“He also had one of my tac vests that I had
loaned to code enforcement!! Face shoot the f-----!!!” the sergeant wrote. “He
was one of my first arrests!!! Sent him to prison for a minute!!”
Reyna-Sanchez’s
comments that day were part of a pattern of violent, sexually explicit and
demeaning messages sent between officers in Eureka, a coastal town in far
Northern California.
The messages within the group chat include obscene comments about
people experiencing homelessness and mental illness, all written only months
after a damning Humboldt County grand jury report that criticized the
department’s treatment of the homeless.
Officers
openly advocated for violence and made degrading comments about women’s
breasts, ridiculed a female colleague, and imagined homeless people and others
in sexual situations, according to a Sacramento Bee review of the messages.
Reyna-Sanchez
said about his coffee order: “Black and bitter...like my fantasy wife!!!”
Ten
years before texting his squad to “face shoot” a suspect, Reyna-Sanchez himself
shot a 25-year-old man in the head. Officers were struggling with David Sequoia
in a carport, and the man reportedly pointed a gun within inches of an
officer’s face. That officer shot Sequoia in the chest.
Seconds
later, Reyna-Sanchez shot the man in the head because, investigators said,
Sequoia was still pointing the gun at officers. Sequoia died, and the shooting
was deemed justified.
A
source who asked to remain anonymous provided The Bee with a series of
photographs of the group messages sent among the squad over cell phones,
offering only a snapshot of ongoing conversations spanning months. It was
unclear if any of them were using city-owned cell phones.
Although
Eureka, with a population of 27,000, has about 50 sworn officers, the messages
reviewed by The Bee were confined to six officers in a single squad, primarily
from Reyna-Sanchez, the leader of the group, and another officer, Mark Meftah.
In
one exchange early in the pandemic, on April 4, Reyna-Sanchez told his officers
that public health officials had asked them to check on a resident believed to
have contracted COVID-19.
Officer
Meftah responded:“My plan if I had to go there was to knock as lightly as
humanly possible on the door, give him an eighth of a second to answer, and
then leave.”
Reyna-Sanchez
then wrote: “The public health dr suggested we go there, knock loud and step
back when he came to the door!!! Nice plan bitch!!! I’ll be right behind u!!!”
Reyna-Sanchez
later updated his team.
“So
the outbreak monkey on L st has been contacted by eoc and is code 4… evidently
they just called him until he answered and they’re good with that.”
Reyna-Sanchez,
who was hired in 1999 and promoted to sergeant in 2007, did not respond to
phone messages seeking comment.
He
did receive them, however. Meftah mistakenly sent a text message intended for
the sergeant to a Sacramento Bee reporter who had contacted him earlier in the
day.
“Dude
left a voice mail, too,” Meftah wrote. He questioned what someone was “trying
to do (to) us/you???”
“Well,
that’s awkward…” he wrote to The Bee reporter seconds later.
When
The Bee described three of the messages to him, Meftah replied: “Ah, well, I’ve
no comment on that. None of that sounds familiar.” He then said the date of one
exchange was from more than a year ago.
“I’m
going to terminate our conversation as I’m preparing to drive,” he said. He did
not reply to additional questions.
Eureka
Police Department Chief Steve Watson said he was unaware of the messages until
The Bee requested a comment from him Tuesday. Watson said he has launched a
formal investigation into the texts.
“It
does deeply concern me,” he said in a phone interview Tuesday evening, adding
that it jeopardized the progress the department has made in the community since
he took over in 2017. “The public’s trust is our lifeblood. It’s not something,
genuinely, that we take lightly.”
He
said the texts were “disappointing and discouraging and inappropriate.”
“There’s
no excuse if these comments were made,” Watson said. “We need to investigate
it, look into it and take appropriate action just to make sure that the values
of this department to our community are projected in everything that we do.”
Experts
and former law enforcement officials who reviewed the messages said their
demeaning nature and encouragement of violence are signs of deeper cultural
problems in the small North Coast department — especially because they’re
coming from a supervisor.
“These
officers are doing their own organization a terrific disservice,” said Kevin
Robinson, a retired assistant chief from the Phoenix Police Department who
teaches criminal justice at Arizona State University. He called the banter
“reckless” and a signal of a “pervasive attitude.”
“Chalk
it off to whatever you want to chalk it off to,” Robinson said, “but the bottom
line is they’re disrespecting people that depend on them, that they are sworn
to protect and to represent.”
CRUEL COMMENTS ABOUT
PROTESTERS AND WOMEN
The
messages reviewed by The Bee include several obscene references to women,
including one officer who wrote to another, “I’ll find you a prime hooker once
per week.”
When
one officer-in-training was added to their squad, Reyna-Sanchez was displeased.
“Seems
the powers that be feel E Watch is too green to correct any issues that she
has, and she had a lot of issues… so they’re putting her on days so that all u
veteran officers can unf--- her…” Reyna-Sanchez wrote.
He
then responded to another officer’s comment about the assignment: “Clearly they
don’t see what I see… bitch be twice as big as u!!”
The
officers also showed disdain for local protesters. In one of the group chats
The Bee reviewed from January 2020, officers discussed a response to a planned
demonstration.
“There’s
supposed to be a protest at the courthouse from 1700 to 1900 for the ‘war in
Iran’ … confirm u all have ur riot gear?? Gas mask, helmet, and dude handle,”
Reyna-Sanchez wrote.
“I’ll
beat those f------ hippies down,” Officer Meftah wrote to the group.
“Why
don’t I have a side handle??” Reyna-Sanchez wrote, referring to a police baton.
In
another conversation, they discussed a woman who was known to shoplift and who
also had a history of mental illness. She was walking in a section of town.
“Get
pics of her rack!!” Reyna-Sanchez wrote.
“Saggy
ol udders,” Meftah replied.
“Have
her stand on her head!!” Reyna-Sanchez said.
“I’d
still look, obviously,” Meftah replied.
JOKES ABOUT PEOPLE WITH
MENTAL ILLNESS
A Humboldt County grand jury issued a damaging report in 2019
that was critical of the department’s enforcement against people experiencing
homelessness, nearly half of whom had been homeless for more than three years
and 70% of whom had a history of drug or alcohol abuse.
“This
does not paint a portrait of a population that would respond well to citations,
arrests, and constantly being moved from place to place,” jurors wrote. “From
our interviews with the homeless and people who work with the homeless, law
enforcement efforts only create more exhaustion, mental anguish, and the need
for drugs to mask those states.”
The
city denied that its officers could do anything differently. Chief Watson said
in an official response to jurors that “together we must find innovative and
humane approaches leading to real, lasting solutions.”
Six
months after that report was published, his officers continued their series of
cruel jokes, many of them involving people with mental illness.
Last
spring, Reyna-Sanchez made jokes about homeless people having sex in public
spaces. “Oh boy!! Trog sex!!!”
“Hey
sex is sex, you put that s--- on front of me ima watch,” Officer Meftah
responded. “And i did, for like 10 minutes…”
On
July 4, officers were dispatched to a call involving a woman. “She sounds
hot!!! Reyna-Sanchez wrote. “In this cold chill, I bet she got some hard
nipples!!!”
Meftah
identified the woman, who police knew to have a mental illness.
“Just
like Campbell soup… mmmm, mmmm, good!!!” Reyna-Sanchez wrote.
“If
she’s going to insist I going topless, she needs to get her some 44DDs!!! And
not the 38 longs she has!!! They look like beaver tails!!”
Last
summer, on the heels of marches for police reform, Reyna-Sanchez was unsympathetic
when officers shot and killed a man in a Eureka backyard. Officers and mental
health specialists had spent more than three hours trying to negotiate with a
suicidal veteran who suffered from PTSD
Negotiations
broke down. The man pointed the gun at the police, and four officers fired.
Reyna-Sanchez,
who was not working at the time of the shooting, sent a note to his squad that
said the suspect “is at st joes with several extra holes in him!!”
Investigators
said the shooting was justified.
MESSAGES HARM GOOD POLICE
WORK, EXPERTS SAY
The
messages were troubling but not surprising, said Philip Stinson, a professor at
Bowling Green State University who studies police use of force and law
enforcement culture.
Banter
like that captured in the Eureka text messages shows the rare, unvarnished
reality of how some officers view their work, said Stinson, who used to work
for a police department himself.
“This
is the police subculture of that agency unmasked,” Stinson said. “This is the
officers in their natural habitat, talking amongst themselves. It’s an
us-versus-them mentality. It’s a sexualized environment where policing is
violent. It’s ugly.”
The
messages also show an environment resistant to change in the city, which for
years has also struggled with a swell of drug abuse, homelessness and
overwhelmed social services.
One
officer in the Eureka texts appeared to ridicule efforts to ban chokeholds and
other deadly restraints against suspects. In one text exchange, an officer
shared a YouTube video about “control techniques” being barred in New York
City. “(Gov. Gavin) Newsom is already j---- off with excitement hoping he can
get it here I’m sure,” another officer wrote.
“At
the end of the day, whether somebody was joking or not joking, or intended to
to be offensive or not, we have to be responsible and accountable for our words
and our actions,” Watson said. “And we have to be careful that everything that
we do on and off duty reflects in a positive light, that reinforces trust with
our community.”
Robinson,
the former chief in Phoenix, said comments like those in the text messages are
detrimental to the good work the vast majority of law enforcement officers are
trying to do — especially given the recent reckoning facing law enforcement.
He
said, based on the text messages, they need a cultural change.
“It’s
not going to stop,” Robinson said, “until people realize for sure that they are
going to be disciplined for it, if not lose their jobs.”
Sacramento
Bee
BY JASON POHL
MARCH 17, 2021
No comments:
Post a Comment