A white San Jose police officer resigned after an internal investigation found racist text messages in which he said, "I hate Black people" and repeatedly used the N-word. Last year, the same officer wrongly shot a Black student.
Mark McNamara has been with the San Jose Police Department since 2017 and resigned after being notified that his messages would be part of an internal investigation, the Mercury News reported.
In a statement, San Jose Police Chief Anthony Mata referred to the texts as "disgusting text messages that demonstrated racial bias." He added that the texts were uncovered due to an unrelated criminal investigation that sparked the internal investigation into McNamara.
"There is zero tolerance for even a single expression of racial bias at the San José Police Department," Mata said in the statement. "... If any employee's racial bias rears its ugly head, rest assured that I will take immediate action to ensure they are not part of this organization."
Mata added that they likely won't file criminal charges over the text messages.
The text messages were sent to two unnamed recipients, one active San Jose Police Department employee and one former department employee. The current employee was placed on administrative leave "pending an internal investigation."
Some of the messages reference McNamara's involvement in the controversial 2022 shooting at a downtown taqueria in which he shot K’aun Green, a Black young man, in the back.
In that shooting, Green broke up a fight in a taqueria and successfully disarmed one of the people involved in the altercation. When police arrived, they incorrectly assumed he was the gunman as Green backed out of the front door with the confiscated gun in the air.
McNamara was one of the officers who shot Green a total of four times in the back, abdomen, and arm.
"“N—— wanted to carry a gun in the Wild West … Not on my watch," McNamara said in a text after the shooting.
In another message McNamara said Green should thank him for shooting him and said "I don’t give a shit about this case."
In yet another, he said of Black men that, "They should all be bowing to me and bringing me gifts... Otherwise he would have lived a life of poverty and crime."
Angel Alexander, one of Green's attorneys, said they were taken aback by the messages.
"The one honestly that sticks out the most in my head was this text that said, ‘I hate black people,’ plain and simple," Alexander told KTVU. "To see it in black and white on a piece of paper, there is no guessing or speculation. And, you know, the more you read, the worse it gets."
The Daily Dot reached out to the San Jose Police Department for comment via email.
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