Texts discovered during an investigation into an ongoing separate 2015 sexual assault scandal involving SFPD officer Jason Lai feature messages including 'F*** that n*g' and 'Indian ppl are disgusting'.
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| Racist and homophobic text messages were sent to and from Jason Lai, a San Francisco police officer who resigned from the department earlier this month |
The messages, obtained by CNN, were sent to and from Lai, a Chinese officer who resigned from the department earlier this month.
Other officers trading texts with Lai are blacked out or listed as 'unknown' in the documents.
Lai was charged with misdemeanor counts of unlawful possession of criminal offender history information and misuse of confidential Department of Motor Vehicle information, and he will be arraigned May 3.
Additionally, sexual assault allegations made against him in August last year.
Officials were reading through the huge haul of evidence when they found the messages, which had been sent by at least four officers.
'I hate that beaner,' one text read, using a derogatory word for Hispanic people. 'But I think the n*g is worse.'
'Indian ppl are disgusting,' said another message.
'Burn down walgreens and kill the bums,' a third message read.
The above text messages were allegedly set by Lai and had been exchanged on his personal phone to his closest friends in the police department and people he had befriended on his beat.
The texts were sent on the police officers' personal cell phones between late 2014 and late 2015.
This means they were sent at the same time as a previous investigation saw 14 other SFPD cops accused of sending racist text messages in March last year.
According to San Francisco District Attorney George Gascon, the new texts were 'almost mocking what was going on' in the other investigation and 'clearly acknowledged' the ongoing scandal.
Gascon said the new messages were 'very problematic' and included the word 'n****r', 'disparaging comments about Hispanics' and discussions about female officers' sexuality, Fox News reported.
Lai's attorney, Don Nobles, said the texts were 'not reflective of who he is' and that 'there is no evidence he carried out any of those sentiments as an officer.'
'He was well liked and well loved on his beat,' Nobles said of Lai, who had been on the force for six years.
The text messages have been turned over to the San Francisco Public Defender's office, which is representing a defendant in a case in which Lai was involved, according to CNN.
In addition to the racist texts, Lai also allegedly used coded language to talk about gay officers, a source told CNN.
'Passive aggressive 528,' he wrote in one message. The code 528 refers to the numeric call for a fire call, and Lai allegedly used the code to describe gay officers as 'flames or flaming', the source said.
Lai's also made blanketed statements about residents living in the largely minority and low-income Tenderloin district, saying 'They're all drug dealers in the TL'.
In one text Lai makes a joke about President Barack Obama and says he hates Cleveland basketball player LeBron James.
'F*** that n*g,' the text reads.
In several texts, Lai makes references to 'hock gwai', which appears to be a misspelled reference to 'hak gwai', a Cantonese derogatory phrase for African Americans.
In texts sent last June, the messages describe a 'bunch of hock gwais shooting each other'.
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| District Attorney George Gascon says the messages were recently discovered during a separate investigation. |
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| SFPD Chief Greg Suhr says they were known about for months |
The officer texted that one of the suspects 'went to the hospital after he got shot lol'.
'Too bad none of them died,' he added. 'One less to worry about.'
In an exchange that happened during the riots in Baltimore following the death of Freddie Gray, Lai wrote, 'They're like a pack [of] wild animals on the loose', referring to African Americans.
In a message sent to Lai on another occasion, a person described an 'on-duty' accident from 2015.
'Some dumb Asian chick driving for Uber didn't look and changed lanes right into my car,' the texter said.
Some of Lai's texts were sent after the first scandal made headlines, and at one point made a joke about being the subject of an internal affairs investigation.
'R U READING THIS IA?' he texted.
When investigators obtained search warrants during the sexual assault investigation in August 2015, Lai sent a text to an unknown recipient that said it was his 'drop phone', using a term drug dealers use to describe disposable phones used to conduct illegal business.
'Don't contact me or answer any calls/texts from my normal cell until further,' the text said.
Police spokesman officer Albie Esparza told CNN that three of the four officers implicated in the texting scandal with Lai were no longer working in the police department.
He added that a fourth officer is facing disciplinary charges and that the force is 'going to be better served without' the officers who were no longer with the force.
The texts were among the 25,000 pages of messages being proved as part of the criminal investigation against officer Lai, San Francisco District Attorney George Gascon said.
The district attorney claimed that he immediately informed SFPD Chief Greg Suhr of the texts after their discovery.
He claimed that his investigators were not aware of the messages until March, when he says they were stumbled upon among the evidence in the Lai case.
'It was never pointed out to us. If the department knew about it, it's a problem that we weren't told,' Gacson said.
But Suhr said the raft of messages was sent to the district attorney's office in September and that police officials repeatedly told Gacson's team about the texts.
'For you to suggest that you discovered the text messages through your own criminal investigation would be disingenuous,' Suhr wrote in a scathing letter.
'This is not new information as our offices have been working closely on this case with at least three members of your staff to ensure the fair administration of justice.'
Gascon said once he learned of the new messages, he immediately sent a letter to police Chief Greg Suhr to make sure the officers weren't on active duty with the public.
Gascon claimed today his office was not notified of the bigoted text messages by police and only learned of it in March after sifting through the thousands of pages of messages themselves.
Fourteen cops accused of sending racist texts in the earlier scandal escaped being fired because the SFPD had not acted within a one-year statute of limitations of being told of the messages.
Public defender Jeff Adachi said his office would investigate whether past investigations were 'tainted' by the officers.
'I am also calling for an independent investigation into when the police chief and district attorney learned of the text messages,' he said.
'Every person in San Francisco deserves equal justice. It does them a grave disservice to dismiss every hateful act as an isolated incident. The Police Department must address the culture that lets racism fester in its ranks.'
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