These Newly Released Emails Show Just How Deeply Racist Ferguson’s Justice System Is

Author: Rika Christensen April 3, 2015 7:52 pm

Officials in Ferguson, Mo. have released the unredacted versions of racially-charged emails that got two Ferguson police officers, and a court clerk, fired. The emails preceded the events leading up to Michael Brown’s death in August 2014 by several years, and they underscore the deeply racist environment that exists in Ferguson. The Washington Post obtained the emails in a FOIA request.
The three people fired were Mary Ann Twitty, Ferguson’s court clerk; former Ferguson police captain Rick Henke, and former police sergeant William Mudd. The Justice Department referenced the emails in their report on Ferguson’s policies and culture, but this is the first time anybody’s been able to see who sent which email. The Washington Post posted some and quoted others. One email, from Mudd to Twitty, said:

“A black woman in New Orleans was admitted into the hospital [for] pregnancy termination. Two weeks later she received a check for $5,000. She phoned the hospital to ask who it was from. The hospital said, ‘Crimestoppers.'”

Another, also from Mudd, said:

“Last week I went to sign my two dogs up for welfare. At first the lady said, ‘Dogs are not eligible to draw welfare.’ So I explained to her that my dogs are mixed in color, unemployed, lazy, can’t speak English and have no frigging clue who their Daddies are. They expect me to feed them, provide them with housing and medical care. So she looked in her policy book to see what it takes to qualify. My dogs get their first checks Friday.
Damn, this is a great country!!”

An email from Twitty was a picture of Ronald Reagan feeding a baby monkey. The caption on the photo says:

“Rare photo of Ronald Reagan babysitting Barack Obama in early 1962.”

According to page 72 of the DOJ report, one email was a photo of bare-chested women, presumably dancing in Africa, and it bore a caption that said, “Michelle Obama’s High School Reunion.”
The report said that there were many more inappropriate, racist emails as well, and there were no records indicating that anybody had ever been disciplined for these. They also didn’t see any evidence that anyone had asked the senders of these emails to stop, or that the emails were reported to anybody, which indicates a pervasive culture of not only racism, but also of fear that speaking up could lead to all sorts of problems.
WaPo reports that officials at all levels of government condemned the emails, as did Ferguson Mayor James Knowles, saying that they did not reflect the culture of Ferguson’s police department.
Yet, with everything the DOJ report shows, these emails are merely further evidence that the justice system in Ferguson was stacked heavily against the black community, and they had zero intention of changing that. These emails come from 2008 to 2011, so passing racist jokes along was neither new, nor were these isolated incidents. Racism and hate were present, and worse, allowed to grow and flourish. These emails show that in stark detail.

Featured image by Loavesofbread – Own work. Licensed under CC BY-SA 4.0 via Wikimedia Commons