Justice Department resolves investigation of Antioch Police Department over racist texts

The Department of Justice announced on Friday it has resolved a biased policing investigation of California’s Antioch Police Department, where racist texts allegedly sent by officers sparked outrage and blowback.

The city and its police have agreed to hire a consultant to review its policies, its officer training, and its use-of-force incidents to suggest improvements, the Justice Department said in a statement.

The parties agreed to a framework for federal monitoring, to the establishment of a stronger accountability role for its oversight body, and to the collection of data on the department’s interactions for five years, it said.

“In working with the Justice Department to institute policing reform, Antioch Police Department sends a strong message that the discrimination and misconduct that prompted this investigation will not be tolerated,” Assistant Attorney General Kristen Clarke of the Justice Department’s Civil Rights Division said in Friday’s announcement.

The Antioch Police Department said Friday that it welcomes the agreement as it continues to cooperate with a separate California Department of Justice investigation of biased policing.

“The actions that prompted this investigation were unacceptable and failures occurred,” the police department said in its statement. “We will implement and enhance comprehensive policies, practices, training programs, community engagement initiatives, and oversight mechanisms to ensure that officers uphold integrity and fairness while addressing misconduct swiftly and effectively.”

The Justice Department said its investigation was sparked by racist texts allegedly exchanged by officers from late 2019 to early 2022, which included homophobic and racist slurs and one suggestion that a “less lethal” weapon be used on the city’s mayor, who is Black and in his fifth year as the top leader of Antioch.

Texts allegedly included bragging about beating suspects and manufacturing evidence, according to a 2023 report compiled by the Contra Costa County District Attorney’s Office after it and the FBI investigated the racist texts.

The DA’s office report inspired the Justice Department’s own investigation in June 2023, it said.

The Antioch Police Officers Association, which represents sworn, rank-and-file employees in city contract negotiations, did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

Antioch, a city of more than 117,000 about 50 miles northeast of San Francisco, is more than 2/3 non-white, more than 1/3 Hispanic or Latino, and about 1/5 Black, according to U.S. Census Bureau data.

After the DA’s office report was released under the order of a local judge, outrage erupted and civil rights lawsuits were filed.

An arson and mutilation case against two men charged in connection with the discovery of the burned body of Mykaella Sharlman, 25, was dropped in 2023 after the texts were revealed. Prosecutors said the prosecution’s reliance on officers involved in the scandal wouldn’t survive a jury’s scrutiny.

“The Contra Costa District Attorney’s Office no longer has confidence in the integrity of this prosecution,” it said in a statement in 2023.

Sister Nicole Eason said the officers’ texts shouldn’t have had such an affect and suggested Sharlman’s family was ready to take the matter to civil court. Prosecutors said they were trying to find other ways — besides relying on the officers, who were not identified — to resolve the case. No civil cases appear to have been filed in Contra Costa County in connection with Sharlman’s death.

Four people who say their civil rights were violated by Antioch police officers and a fifth whose father was fatally shot by officers announced a federal lawsuit against the city in April 2023. The civil action was ongoing, though a few parties have settled their claims, according to court records.

Eight officers in the texting report were placed on administrative leave, three were indicted by a federal grand jury for conspiring to “injure, oppress, threaten and intimidate” residents, and one of those three resigned. Efforts to reach the three were unsuccessful at the time of the indictment in 2023.

Michael Rains, a lawyer who represented some of the officers involved in the texting mentioned in the report, said in 2023 that the number of officers involved in the texting was low.

“Suggestions in many media accounts that inappropriate text messaging was widespread … was simply not the case,” he said at the time.

Rains did not immediately respond to a request for comment Friday night regarding the Justice Department’s resolution.

This article was originally published on NBCNews.com

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