A Georgia police chief and an officer have been removed from their roles for making racist remarks on bodycam footage ahead of a Black Lives Matter protest, city officials said.
Hamilton Police Chief Gene Allmond and Sgt. John Brooks were caught using racial slurs, discussing slavery and talking about which prominent black official they’d rather have sex with — Atlanta Mayor Keisha Lance Bottoms or voting rights activist Stacey Abrams, WRBL reported.
Allmond and Brooks were unaware they were being recorded hours before a June BLM rally in Hamilton, where a part-time city employee checking to see if a police body camera still worked found the clip and reportedly took it to the mayor’s office.
“Protests, son of a bitch, what is the matter with these f—king people?” Allmond asked Brooks, a transcript shows. “My folks didn’t own no slaves.”
“Hey, hey,” Brooks replied, according to the transcript.
“You know, what are we talking about?” Allmond continued. “200 f—king years ago?
The chief went on to say that blacks were “mistreated” during the “slave times” but claimed they had received housing and food for their labor.
“But for the most part, it seems to me like, they furnished them a house to live in, they furnished ’em clothes to put on their back, they furnished ’em food to put on their table, and all they had to do was f–kin’ work,” the chief said.
Police Chief Gene Allmond has resigned following the release of the bodycam footage. WTVM“And now, we give them all those things and they don’t have to work,” Brooks replied, according to the transcript.
At another point during the six-minute clip, Brooks used a racial slur to say he’d rather “f–k” Bottoms than Abrams, who previously ran for governor as a Democrat in Georgia.
The footage got so “ugly” that no one on the Hamilton City Council could watch the entire exchange, an assistant for Hamilton Mayor Julie Brown told WRBL.
“We wanted them off the force because we don’t want that kind of ugliness here in Hamilton,” Brown said. “Race I don’t think has been an issue here. At least it hasn’t been in the 37 years I’ve been here, and we just didn’t want that, especially now in this day and age we want more unity. The whole country needs more unity, we need to heal, so we didn’t want anything stopping that.”
Allmond resigned on Jan. 25, while Brooks was terminated.
The city’s attorney, meanwhile, said action had to be taken after watching the clip.
“After reviewing the footage, I think it speaks for itself,” Ron Iddins told WRBL. “The city, its failure to take action at that point and time would have been inexplicable. It had to be done.”
