San Francisco police chief moves to dismiss officers over racist texts

San Francisco Police Chief Greg Suhr said on Friday that he had moved to dismiss seven police officers in the department, all of whom had sent or received racist text messages in 2011 and 2012, The New York Times reports.

The texts "are of such despicable thinking that those responsible clearly fall below the minimum standards required to be a police officer," Suhr said.

The messages included racist and homophobic slurs; lawyers for the officers involved said the texts were nothing more than innocent banter spurred by a high-stress job. But the city's district attorney and public defender's offices called the exchanges "toxic," and noted that several of the officers involved worked in predominantly minority neighborhoods.

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"This casual dehumanization leads to real-life suffering and injustice…in which citizens fear and distrust the police…and good officers are less effective," Jeff Adachi, San Francisco's public defender, said.