re than 50 criminal cases will be dropped after four Florida police officers were fired over their racist text messages and videos.
The Broward State Attorney’s Office has already dropped 12 felony cases involving charges of burglary, cocaine possession, and aggravated assault with a firearm,reported the Sun-Sentinel.
They have also dropped 19 misdemeanor cases and one juvenile case involving at least one of the Fort Lauderdale police officers.
About 20 more cases will be dismissed, prosecutors said.
“All the defendants were black,” said Ron Ishoy, a spokesman for the state attorney’s office. “All the cases were dropped because at least one of the officers was the principal officer involved in the arrest.”
The department fired three police officers — Jason Holding, 31, James Wells, 30, and Christopher Sousa, 25 – last month, while a fourth officer, Alex Alvarez, 22, resigned in January.
Alvarez stepped down in the middle of a five-month probe that was launched by a complaint filed by his former fiancée.
An internal investigation found the four officers used racial slurs in text messages as they fantasized about executing black suspects while on duty.
“I had a wet dream that you two found those two n*****s in the VW and gave them the death penalty right there on the spot,” one officer said in a text.
Alvarez also produced a trailer for a pro-Ku Klux Klan movie called “The Hoods,” that showed racist images of President Barack Obama and dogs biting a black man.
A public defender said the four officers were involved in 56 arrests of black and other minority suspects since the start of 2014.
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