What the article describes is absolutely horrific.
CW: racism, violence
When the FBI seized Antioch police officers’ professional and private cellphones, agents found chains of text messages exchanged between as many as 45 Antioch officers. The texts contained racial slurs and described violence officers inflicted against suspects, court records show. The N-word and terms describing Black suspects as “gorillas,” “monkeys,” and circus animals were used in text messages written and received by officers and APD supervisors.
Officer Eric Rombough, who played soccer professionally before joining APD, bragged about how hard he kicked a young Black man in the head, court records containing the text messages show. Rombough wrote in one text, “He got his a** whooped in the back yard and I field goal kicked his head. I tried to knock him unconscious.”
In another text message from 2022, Rombough wrote, “Bottom line it doesn’t matter some gorilla killed another gorilla.”
"Nobody is above the law"
Any regular fucking job if you had obscene racist/generally bigoted violent messages released you would be fired immediately without question. The people with the power to carry out these views get placed on leave with the assumption of returning at another point. Why? Because this is almost half of their police force (no need to explain this trend, just a few bad apples).