Nine officers across two police departments in East Bay, Calif. were arrested by FBI agents Thursday after being indicted by a federal grand jury. Of those officers were the slimy Antioch cops exposed for calling Black people gorillas, n-words and all types of degrading insults in their texts.
Over 100 FBI agents were deployed to arrest current and former officers from the Antioch and Pittsburg police departments, according to KRON4 News. The 30-page federal indictment accuses the group of crimes including college degree benefit fraud and violating the civil rights of civilians. As if the APD isnβt in enough hell upon the state and federal probes into their employeesβ bigoted banter, two of them were accused of slinging anabolic steroids. They were also accused of trying to destroy the evidence. Another APD cop, Morteza Amiri, was accused of excessive force for deploying his K-9 on 28 people and then saving images of the bloody dog bites in his camera roll.
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At this point, what havenβt they been accused of?
Read more from NBC News:
Eric Rombough, Devon Wenger and Mortez Amiri have been accused of conspiring to βinjure, oppress, threaten and intimidateβ residents in Antioch, a city of roughly 114,000 people located 45 miles northeast of San Francisco, according to a 30-page indictment filed in federal court in Californiaβs Northern District.
In a 2020 text, Wenger told Amiri that they needed to βgo 3 nights in a row dog bite!!!β Amiri emphasized the message, according to the indictment, and Wenger replied with a homophobic slur about a senior officer, saying they should give the lieutenant βsomething to stress out about lol.β
In another text that year, Amiri sent Wenger eight graphic images of people with dog bites and described the work week as βvery eventful,β according to the indictment.
Antioch Mayor Lamar Thorpe, who was a target of the racist police messages, issued a statement in response to the arrest calling it a βdark dayβ for the city.
βPeople trusted to uphold the law allegedly breached that trust and were arrested by the FBI. Todayβs actions are the beginning of the end of a long and arduous process. Todayβs arrests are demonstrative of the issues that have plagued the Antioch Police Department for decades,β he said.
Simultaneously, the Contra Costa DAβs office, FBI and California Attorney Generalβs Office are investigating the officers involved. Over the past 2 two years of the probes, nearly half the Antioch Police Department was accused of something. More arrests could be on the way.
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