

Johnson, a former Homeland Security secretary, to conduct a review of racial bias within the state’s court system. Racist conduct among court personnel has been a subject of particular concern since the spring of 2020 when, after the killing of George Floyd, Judge DiFiore asked a team led by Jeh C. Chalfen would not elaborate on the details of the case, saying that a transcript of the hearing would not be available because it had occurred in Family Court, where proceedings are often kept private because they involve young people. A call to a woman believed to be the clerk went unreturned, and she did not respond to a text message. The president of the New York State Court Clerks Association could not be reached, and others with the association did not immediately return requests for comment. “It was like she was thinking out loud, and everybody heard what she was thinking,” he said. Her remarks seemed to be prompted, he said, by the way his client was wearing his pants. Thornhill said, and he thought it was likely that the clerk had assumed she was muted. He said that monitoring the Rant message board had not been a priority.Thursday’s hearing was delayed by technical issues, Mr. Tucker, was asked what steps the department was taking to identify and remove problematic officers like Inspector Kobel. “Even as the city has become much more diverse, the leadership of the department has become an old boys’ club, and that reinforces the blue wall of silence, the culture of impunity, and the resistance to reform,” he said.Īt a City Council hearing in December, the department’s first deputy commissioner, Benjamin B. He said he has pushed the New York Police Department to root out bigotry in its ranks, but the department’s leaders, in his view, lack the will to do more. Torres, a Bronx Democrat, said that he was generally worried about white supremacists in American law enforcement. But policing in America is an alternate reality where accountability is hard to come by.” “And in almost all workplaces he would have been fired instantaneously. “He should have been fired months ago,” he said.

Torres said the Council’s investigators had presented the case to the Police Department “on a silver platter,” and Inspector Kobel’s dismissal was long overdue. In addition, on more than one occasion, Inspector Kobel was in the same location as the electronic device used to make the posts, including on a Long Island Rail Road train, the official said. Some of the posts were made using Inspector Kobel’s Police Department equipment, the official said.

Slur seek root out clerk is professional#
The posts were also peppered with numerous details about the anonymous author’s life that matched the personal and professional biographies of Inspector Kobel, including the date he started in the department: June 30, 1992. Obama, the writer known as Clouseau compared one African-American prosecutor to a “wildebeest” and used an obscene slur to insult a female police chief.
Slur seek root out clerk is series#
The events that led to Inspector Kobel’s downfall began last summer, when City Council investigators stumbled upon the series of racist postings on the Rant, a raw and often racist online forum where law enforcement officers vent about their jobs.Įven by the website’s crass and rowdy standards, the posts were unusually vicious. “He chose to file for retirement and move on with this life, but the department sought to dismiss him instead.” “Unfortunately, he was already tried and convicted in the court of public opinion,” Mr. Chris Monahan, the president of the Captain’s Endowment Association, said the inspector had an unblemished record for 28 years.
