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A Police Chief in Oregon Has Resigned After Allegedly Going on a Bizarre Racist Rant

He reportedly mimed beating someone while singing slavery throwback ballad "Dixie."

Photo via Flickr user Born1945

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The police chief of Clatskanie, Oregon, a town about an hour from Portland, has resigned over accusations of racism, as the Guardian reported. But these weren't accusations of the kind of structural racism alleged in places like Ferguson, where at least until recently cops targeted minorities for arrests in order to produce revenue. Instead, complaints came in about this particular chief imitating a monkey and comparing a black woman to an animal. (To be fair, they're dealing with pockets of that kind of old-school prejudice in cities like Baltimore, too.)

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Most unusual about this incident is that fellow cops reported the alleged racism of their own boss, crossing the so-called "Blue Line" of loyalty. The chief's behavior was that fucking backward and awful.

One complaint, first obtained by local broadcast station KOIN, was filed by Officer D. Alex Stone. Stone claims he was in the middle of letting Chief Marvin Hoover know that there'd been some insinuations about departmental racism, and that a black woman Stone had recently arrested had said to him, "When you look at me, my black skin and my nappy hair, all you see is an animal." The woman was threatening a lawsuit.

Chief Hoover then apparently lost his shit. "That's what she is," he allegedly responded, adding "Hooo…hooo….hooo….hahahaha…hooo….haaah." After that, he started scratching his armpits and jumping around the room. Then he beat his fists on his chest "like Tarzan," according to the complaint, which is actually a generous guess as to Hoover's intention with that pantomime, because Tarzan is imitating the behavior of his ape pals when he does that.

Stone says he tried to finish telling the story about the arrest, but was again interrupted. This time the chief reportedly switched gears, and, from the sound of it, pretended to be a Southerner instead of an ape. He allegedly sang nostalgic slave ballad "Dixie" while punching the air, and then mimed grabbing someone by the collar. Then he did this weird thing:

In addition, while singing the words "look away" Chief Hoover moved his head back-and-forth to his left and right as if he was looking over his shoulder. After Chief Hoover finished singing, he laughed and then left the room.

Hoover had been a popular figure, having been decorated for valor after he apprehended the killer of a neighboring town's police chief. When he announced his early retirement after taking a leave of absence, Diane Pohl, the mayor of Clatskanie, bizarrely told a local newspaper in an effusive letter to the editor that she "must admit a sadness that the security this community has enjoyed under his watchful duty is at an end."

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