On Friday, four Fort Lauderdale, Florida, cops were outed for exchanging racist emails and text messages, earning the South Florida police department the distinction of being the latest American law enforcement agency to draw an investigation from the federal government for possible civil rights violations.Three of the cops—Jason Holding, Christopher Sousa, and James Wells—were fired and the fourth, Alex Alvarez, resigned prior to the completion of a five-month internal probe.The reasons for termination are cited in the internal affairs investigation report as "engaging in conduct prejudicial to the good order of the department" and "conduct unbecoming of a police officer."This whole thing started when Alvarez's one-time fiancee, Priscilla Perez, sent Fort Lauderdale Chief of Police Frank Adderley—who is black—an email in October indicating that she believed her ex to be racist. She then forwarded Adderley 11 emails with screenshots of text exchanges between Alvarez and his colleagues.The chief passed the exchange on to the Office of Internal Affairs.In the texts—which were sent on taxpayer time—the four officers went after just every possible minority group, as theBoward Palm-Beach New Times reported:In addition to racist statements about black people, Hispanics and homosexuals were also targeted, as well as coworkers.
Sousa was found to have texted, "Holdings we are coming and drinking all your beer and killing niggers." Sousa later said he did it to "fit in" on the force, and that he regretted using the terms. He said his best friend since third grade is black.
Wells texted the word "niggers" and "nigger lover" dismissively and also "razzed" Alvarez by calling him a "faggot." He called some of his coworkers "lazy fucks" and used the term "retarded brown."
Wells later said that the texts were jokes—relief from a stressful job, and that they were never intended to become public. He said they did not reflect his true feelings toward black people.
Holding texted about a "mudshark"—a derogatory reference to a white woman dating a black man. He said the other cops called him this because he was dating a black Haitian-American woman. He said it was teasing, and "all in good fun."
Holding once texted to Alvarez and Wells, after they'd been looking for some suspects who'd fled, "I had a wet dream that you two found those niggers in the VW and gave them the death penalty right there on the spot."
In her email to the police chief, Perez also included an iMovie attachment of a film crudely assembled by Alvarez. The obnoxiously racist film depicts the four cops as "Savage Hunters" trying to take control back from "The Hood" and features President Barack Obama photoshopped with grills. He follows the text, "BUT ONE N—GER WOULD CHANGE EVERYTHING."The video contains poorly edited images of African Americans being attacked by cops and dogs, and uses images of Broward police cruisers. You can watch the video, obtained by the New Times, here.The "film" even contains an oddly tranquil production company opening of a swingset in the sunset under the label, "Uncle Al Films." There's also some KKK imagery peppered in there, as well as and photos from Django Unchained and Tusk.Alvarez credits all the aforementioned officers in various production positions. He even credits additional officers as "Costume Designer" and so on, potentially broadening the scope of the investigation.Perez indicated to police that Alvarez was obsessed with Leonardo DiCaprio's slave-owning character in Django, and frequently referred to himself as "Master Candie." She also alleged that he sent her various other videos that included footage of him and other officers mocking drunk black people, kicking them around on the floor, and making fun of crying black people in the back of a police car. She added that Alvarez talked at length about his racially biased policing:"He would go to, like, uh, a child abuse case and it was like a black person, he wouldn't pay much attention. He's like, 'Oh, it's just another n—ger. They're savages. It doesn't matter' [that]…he got in trouble because he went to a child abuse case and didn't report it." (In that case, Alvarez determined that the "father had the right to administer corporal punishment" to the child in question. The department later went back to the house and wrote up a legit police report.)Of course, the cops insist this was all "in good fun." One officer repeatedly notes that he can't really be racist, as he has black friends and a Haitian girlfriend. Wells refers to "n—ger" as a term of endearment on page 33. But the cops' usage of the word as a catch-all term for lawbreaker is obviously deposable and troubling. And this is just the latest in a spate of less-than-professional policing episodes in the Miami area, including the killing of a young graffiti artist during Art Basel, the arrest of a 90-year old man for feeding the homeless, and what seem like routine police killings conducted with Tasers.Mayor Jack Seiler of Fort Lauderdale told reporters Friday that this was just a "few bad apples," and that his is "a diverse police department."But with the FBI now mounting its own investigation, the rest of the country may be ready to draw a different conclusion.Follow Jonathan Peltz on Twitter 