Fired Miami cops joked about using black neighborhoods for target practice

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Three rookie Miami police officers fired two days before Christmas joked in a group chat with other cops about using predominately black neighborhoods for target practice, an internal affairs investigation found this month.

“Anyone know of an indoor shooting range in Miami?” one officer asked.

“Go to model city they have moving targets,” replied another.

“There’s a range in overtown on 1 and 11. Moving targets and they don’t charge,” added a third.

Officers Kevin Bergnes, Miguel Valdes and Bruce Alcin told an investigator that they were joking, or just commenting on what they’d seen in the city during their training and weren’t trying to offend anyone. Alcin himself is African American, and Valdes has a black grandfather.

Still, their off-the-cuff remarks about two of the city’s historically black communities upset colleagues and supervisors, and came as the department is under the supervision of the U.S. Department of Justice following a spate of questionable police shootings. For department leaders, the officers’ remarks made them a liability both in future civil and criminal cases and in the community.

“It was senseless, young and reckless. It shouldn’t be tolerated,” said Justin Pinn, an African-American member of a civilian board tasked with monitoring Miami’s federal policing agreement. “Officers are supposed to be guardians not warriors. I don’t think what they expressed reflects the values of the department.”

Miami’s police union president, however, says the officers should have been reprimanded but not fired, since their “messages were in poor taste, but weren’t in anyway racial.” Their attorney, Stephan Lopez, said the city has taken his clients’ remarks out of context and blown them out of proportion.

“My clients are young kids. They’re young officers and they were off-duty” when making their comments, he said. “I can’t let their careers be tarnished when they engaged in no misconduct.”

According to an internal affairs memo obtained by the Miami Herald, Bergnes, Valdes and Alcin were among a class of about 30 police officers who went through Miami’s police academy together last year and continued to communicate through a WhatsApp chat they called Post-22. For the most part, the young officers-in-training shared department info on the thread.

On June 30, in response to another officer’s question about shooting ranges, Bergnes mentioned the Stone Hart’s range near Country Walk. Then, Bergnes, known by friends as a wise guy, sarcastically suggested the officer try a Bank of America — “they’ll even give you some cash” — and then Model City, the police district that includes Liberty City and handles the bulk of the city’s shootings.

Forty minutes later, Valdes added that the intersection of First Avenue and 11th Street in Overtown was another good location, and joked that “they even run scenarios and pretend that they’re shooting heroin.” Alcin followed: “Valdes he wouldn’t understand till he work there.”
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Lopez, their attorney, also argues that their texts are not as bad as recent scandals in Fort Lauderdale and Miami Beach, where veteran cops used racial slurs or shared offensive pictures, like a Black Monopoly board where every square leads to jail. He said the officers are going to sue to keep their jobs on the grounds that, ironically, the city is discriminating against them.

“Two of the officers have black blood pumping through their veins,” he said. “To say that they’re racist is outrageous and ludicrous.”
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They say they're just joking but never clarify why slaughtering a neighborhood of black people is hilarious to them. Nor do I believe they'd find similar "jokes" directed at them funny; rather actively dangerous and threatening as the people who are supposedly protected by them feel. Adding this to my ever-growing list of why these communities are justified in not only fearing but fighting back against the tyranny of their supposed brave and earnest law enforcers.
 
Dali said:
I don't which is worse: the police or the police union.
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auKo31q.jpg
 
It drives me nuts when people argue someone of X color or race can't be racist. Im hoping they lose decisively, otherwise people will have free reign to be racist as they can be so long as they avoid a racial slur.
 
These were rookies that got fired, all that means is that they weren't wise enough to censor themselves in that context. This kind of rhetoric is indicative of the culture at large. The police community has a real problem with racial prejudice and casually dismissing the lives of people they are entrusted to protect.
 
These are the types of people that being a police officer attracts.

Rotten to the fucking core.
 
Haha @ "they're young kids" and all the other billshit cop-out excuses

Fuck these guys and props to the other officers who said something when they saw this.
 
Our police are broken. We could have got some type of reform with Hillary, but since Trump is so pro cop its only going to get worse. They are more like agitators with guns than law enforcement.
 
Sort of shows the resentment and the hate-filled attitudes police forces harbor in general that even rookies, one being a minority at that, with not much years under their badges already have a negative, and their lives do not matter attitude towards those they are "sworn to protect".
 
Purely by numbers there has to be at least one police union that isn't a shit stain, right?

LQX said:
Sort of shows the resentment and the hate-filled attitudes police forces harbor in general that even rookies, one being a minority at that, with not much years under their badges already have a negative, and their lives do not matter attitude towards those they are "sworn to protect".
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It is totally a cultural problem, got to indoctrinate them early.
 
Out of any answer they could have given, they chose to specifically name black neighborhoods. How could this not be race related? It's hard to have respect for organizations that exist to give bullshit excuses no matter what happens.
 
"My clients are young kids."

Fuck off with that horseshit. Funny how a cop in his 20's is a kid but a teenage african american gunned down is an adult.
 
“My clients are young kids. They’re young officers and they were off-duty” when making their comments, he said. “I can’t let their careers be tarnished when they engaged in no misconduct.”
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Seriously? He's using that as a defense? Fuck your grown ass clients.

“Two of the officers have black blood pumping through their veins,” he said. “To say that they’re racist is outrageous and ludicrous.”
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This is fucking seething, don't you dare immunize their fucking behaviour, being black or having black relatives or having a black spouse or having black friends...ect...ect... doesn't stop you from being a sociopathic racist piece of shit that shouldn't ever hold a position of authority.

Absolutely maddening the state of law enforcement in the US.
 
Miami’s police union president, however, says the officers should have been reprimanded but not fired, since their “messages were in poor taste, but weren’t in anyway racial.”
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I want to slap the shit out of someone.

At this point I don't even care who.
 
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