A Georgia police chief and a department patrolman have lost their jobs after being recorded engaging in racist talk outside of the Hamilton police station as they prepared for a Black Lives Matter protest.
The recording, posted by Columbus TV station WTVM, captures Hamilton Police Chief Gene Allmond and patrolman John Brooks in conversation last June, documented on video by a body camera worn by Brooks, according to the station.
Lewd comments by Brooks about whom he'd rather have sex with — Atlanta Mayor Keisha Lance Bottoms or former Georgia gubernatorial candidate Stacey Abrams, both of whom are Black — included a racial slur.
Separately, the two men then discussed slavery.
"I don't own no slaves," Allmond says. "My folks didn't own no slaves. What are we talking about, 200 (expletive) years ago?
Subsequently he says: "I don't know if this has any merit back in the slave times, but I'm sure there was a lot of them mistreated, I don't have no doubt about that. But for the most part, it seems to me like they furnished them a house to live in, they furnished them clothes to put on their back, they furnished them food to put on their table, and all they had to do was (expletive) work."
"And now we give them all those things and they don't have to (expletive) work," one of the officers then says.
Allmond resigned Jan. 25 after the footage was discovered, Buddy Walker, an assistant to Hamilton mayor Julie Brown, confirmed to The New York Times. Brooks offered to resign but was fired Tuesday when he failed to surrender his city-issued equipment as promised, he said.
Listening to the recording, "it was disgusting," said Hamilton Mayor Pro-Tem Ransom Farley, who is Black, reports WSB. "I had to leave the room."
City attorney Ron Iddins told WTVM that the footage was discovered during an inspection of the body camera, following a complaint that it was not working properly. "But when it was looked at, it was determined that the bodycam actually had full memory of video," he said.
Following a meeting of the city council, "it was determined that the two officers involved needed to no longer work for the City of Hamilton," he said.
Neither of the former police employees have been charged with wrongdoing, and it was unclear if either had retained attorneys to speak on their behalf.
"Everybody knew what had to be done," Walker said, reports the Times.
Brooks was given the option to resign or be fired, and responded by asking if he could view the recording. "He watched the entire video and then came in and told the mayor pro tem that he was sorry — that that was really not the way he was," Walker told the Times.
Farley told him: "I'm not accepting your apology, because you're sorry that you got caught. You're not sorry because of what you said."
"Nobody told on them," Farley told the newspaper. "They told on themselves."
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