A San Jose police officer is no longer employed by the city after an internal investigation uncovered racially biased messages including, “I hate black people.”
Police Chief Anthony Mata said Officer Mark McNamara had been with the department for six years and was involved in a police shooting at a La Victoria Taqueria in downtown San Jose on March 27, 2022.
The messages appear to refer to the shooting and a lawsuit in which K’aun Green contends he was an innocent victim and accuses police of excessive use of force.
“Internal Affairs investigators discovered that the officer had sent disgusting text messages that demonstrated racial bias,” Mata said in a statement Friday night. “These messages came to light in the last few days and hours and that officer is no longer employed with the city.”
A transcript made available by the Police Department showed an exchange of messages peppered with racial slurs.
“(Racial epithet) wanted to carry a gun in the Wild West,” said one from March 28. “Not on my watch haha.”
In a federal lawsuit filed April 6, 2022, Green, identified then as a 20-year-old student at Contra Costa College, accused San Jose police of excessive force in shooting him four times.
Green said he was a customer in the taqueria when a gunman pointed a weapon at him and other customers. He disarmed the gunman and was fighting his way out of the front door, with the weapon’s barrel pointed up, when police coming up behind him fired without warning.
Green was shot twice in the arm, once in the knee, and once in the abdomen, according to the lawsuit. He was not charged with a crime, the suit says.
Surveillance video from the restaurant released by police at the time showed two groups of men involved in a fight. One of the men had a gun that changed hands between combatants at least twice during the melee.
When the fight moved outside of the restaurant, police saw a man with a handgun and said they asked him to drop the gun. One officer fired shots that hit the man, who was taken to a hospital with non-lethal injuries.
The name of the officer was not released at the time.
“There is zero tolerance for even a single expression of racial bias at the San Jose Police Department,” Mata said Friday.
“The messages were found due to the expansion of our Internal Affairs Unit’s efforts to thoroughly investigate all questionable conduct,” he said. “I made it clear last year when I expanded our investigation systems that we would be proactive and transparent in identifying patterns of policy violations. This is the promised accountability resulting from that work.”
There is nothing more sickening than a person in power abusing their position.
San Jose Mayor matt Mahan
Mata said an employee who “engaged in other concerning dialogue with the former officer” had been placed on administrative leave pending an internal investigation.
“There is nothing more sickening than a person in power abusing their position,” Mayor Matt Mahan said in the same statement as Mata’s. “Despite this officer’s reprehensible conduct, we have the best police department in the nation and to keep it that way, we are going to fire any employee who does not show appropriate respect for every resident.”
The union for San Jose police, the San Jose Police Officers’ Association, said the disclosure of the messages was “a disconcerting reminder that not everyone has the moral compass necessary to be in the law enforcement profession.”
“This behavior is beyond unacceptable, and we condemn it in the strongest possible terms,” union president Steve Slack said in a statement.
“Our union believes that racism, and those who perpetrate it, have no place in our city and no place in law enforcement,” Slack said.
McNamara to lawyers: ‘I’ll shoot you too!!!!!’
Green’s Oakland-based civil rights attorney, Adante Pointer, said the officer threatened in newly disclosed messages to shoot the lawyers suing him for excessive use of force.
In the messages, Pointer said McNamara repeatedly used the N-word to describe the victim and his attorneys and said he would shoot the lawyers representing Green.
“Think I give a f— what y’all nigs think?!???? I’ll shoot you too!!!!! AHHHHHH!!!!!!” McNamara wrote in a June 23 text exchange with a fellow officer. Pointer said it followed a deposition McNamara gave as attorneys prepared a civil rights lawsuit.
“There was like 65 African lookin mother f—ers there too. All just mean mugging me and taking notes. They should all be bowing to me and brining me gifts since I saved a fellow n—- by making him rich as f—. Otherwise he woulda lived a life of poverty and crime,” McNamara wrote in another text later in the conversation.
“Given his deep-seated racist beliefs, McNamara should never be given the privilege of carrying a badge and gun again, nor be placed in any position where those beliefs can be weaponized against Black people.” Adante Pointer, attorney for K’aun Green
McNamara “now seeks to aim his racial animus at Mr. Green’s attorneys, several of whom are Black,” Pointer said.
“Given his deep-seated racist beliefs, McNamara should never be given the privilege of carrying a badge and gun again, nor be placed in any position where those beliefs can be weaponized against Black people,” Pointer said.
Note to readers: This story has been updated to include statement from K’aun Green’s civil rights attorney, Adante Pointer.