3 Officers Fired for Racist Comments and Threats
Wilmington North Carolina
Three officers with the Wilmington Police Department were fired on Wednesday for violating standards of conduct. The terminations were the result of an audit that was being done on video recordings. For those who don’t know, many police agencies do random audits of video that has been capture by police body cams and by the vehicle cams.
In the Wilmington incident, one of the officers, ironically the worst one, accidentally activated his car camera. The audio caught Officer Kevin Piner having two different conversations, one with Officer Brian Gilmore and another with Cpl. Jesse Moore. The conversation between Piner and Gilmore has racist comments but the conversation that Piner has with Cpl. Moore goes much further than that. In that conversation Piner shows how much of a threat he is to any person of color.
According to ABC News,
“Piner and Gilmore began talking from their respective cars, at which time Piner criticized the department, saying its only concern was “kneeling down with the black folks.” About 30 minutes later, Piner received a phone call from Moore, according to the investigation, a segment in which Moore referred to a Black female as a “negro.” He also referred to the woman by using a racial slur. He repeated the use of the slur in describing a Black magistrate, and Moore used a gay slur to describe the magistrate as well.
Later, according to the investigation, Piner told Moore that he feels a civil war is coming and that he is ready. Piner said he was going to buy a new assault rifle, and soon “we are just going to go out and start slaughtering them (expletive)” Blacks. “I can’t wait. God, I can’t wait.” Moore responded that he wouldn’t do that.
Piner then told Moore that he felt a civil war was needed to “wipe them off the (expletive) map. That’ll put them back about four or five generations.” Moore told Piner he was “crazy,” and the recording stopped a short time later.”
The officers were fired for violating standards of conduct but it sounds to me like Officer Piner could have been charged with terroristic threat. I’m not a lawyer and I don’t know North Carolina law but the man said he was going to go buy an assault rifle and said how much he wanted to slaughter blacks. That sounds pretty darn serious to me.
Officers Claim Stress Due to Protests
The three officers claimed that the reason they made the comments is because they were stressed by the protests against police officers. That’s just unbelievable. Black people are stressed on a constant basis. They never know when they will be sleeping in their beds and police officers will kick down their door and kill them. Black people never know if looking out a window to see what the noise is outside will result in their death. They never know if a police stop, often for no valid reason, will result in their death. But these three officers are so stressed because, for one month, people have been protesting. One month. George Floyd was killed on May 25.
The officers haven’t spent their whole lives wondering each day if today was going to be the day they died because of the color of their skin. So what is the threat against them that has them so upset? That they act professionally? That they treat people with respect? That they treat people equally? That they face consequences when they don’t do those things? Wow. Such hardship.
But being stressed wasn’t the only thing they said. All three also said they were not racists. If you read the ABC News article you will see that these three officers even made derogatory comments about fellow black officers. What is their excuse for doing that? But we all know that, “I’m not a racist” comment that so many racists throw out is just bullshit. If you are not offended by racism then you are a racist. That’s the bottom line. And any officer who doesn’t clean up his or her act has a high probability of facing consequences and rightly so. The public will no longer put up with it.