Asst. Police Chief Resigns Over Racist Facebook Messages

'If black shoot them'
By Michael Harthorne,  Newser Staff
Posted Jan 20, 2018 3:23 PM CST
Asst. Police Chief Resigns Over Racist Facebook Messages
An assistant police chief in Kentucky resigned after exchanging racist messages on Facebook with a police recruit.   (AP Photo/Matt Rourke, File)

An assistant police chief in Kentucky resigned after exchanging what a county attorney calls "highly disturbing racist and threatening Facebook messages" with a Louisville police recruit, the Courier-Journal reports. A letter from county attorney Mike O'Connell to Prospect Mayor John Evans detailing the contents of the messages, sent between assistant Prospect police chief Todd Shaw and and the unnamed recruit in 2016, were made public Friday by order of a judge. Regarding "the right thing to do" after catching juveniles smoking marijuana, Shaw allegedly told the recruit: "f--- the right thing. If black shoot them." As for the parents of the hypothetical youth: “If mom is hot then f--- her. If dad is hot then handcuff him and make him suck my dick. Unless daddy is black. Then shoot him." Shaw served 20 years as a Louisville police officer prior to his Prospect gig.

In the messages, Shaw allegedly called Martin Luther King Jr. "a raciast womanizer" and said of housing projects: "For years I have seen the blacks live off uss and putting them in one big housing area breeds HUGE peoblems," WDRB reports. The messages were discovered last August by prosecutors investigating Shaw for allegedly illegally helping an officer charged with sexually abusing teens enrolled in a police program, prompting the letter from O'Connell to Evans. Shaw was suspended following the letter and resigned in November during an investigation into the messages. An attorney for Shaw says his client was just "playing" and blames "today's culture where police are demonized and demoralized." The unnamed recruit allegedly sent racist responses to Shaw and apparently resigned while going through training, according to WLKY. (More racism stories.)

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