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Go Home Boston Cop. He Ain't Too Smart.

THE PLANK JULY 29, 2009

Boston Cop. He Ain't Too Smart.

This isn't good:

A Boston police officer was placed on
administrative leave after he allegedly used a racial slur when
referring to Henry Louis Gates Jr.

In a mass e-mail, Officer Justin Barrett, 36, called Gates a "jungle monkey," according to a law enforcement source.

Good for Mayor Menino (who doesn't want anything to screw up his bid for an historic fifth term) for publicly calling Barrett "a cancer" and promptly suspending him. The most disconcerting part of all this is that Barrett worked in the police district covering Mattapan and Dorchester--which, if you don't know Boston, are where a good portion of the city's black residents live.

--Jason Zengerle

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18 comments

I checked Gates' birth certificate and found no jungle references. Nor any references to rainforests, deserts, savannahs, swamps or mangroves. But the certificate was made out of paper and the paper may have come from a tree in a jungle.  

Also, the birth certificate of Jim the Cop names Lou Dobbs as both the mother and the father. Does this strke you as strange too? I'll check it out with Rachel Maddow and get back to you.

As for racism in Boston, nope, not likely. One need but note how smoothly busing children in and out of Roxbury and South Boston in the 1970s went to put this to the lie. But stranger things have happened, I suspose.

You might want to note the following:

Racism in some parts of Bostons is viewed as a genetic disorder while in other parts it is said to be a qualification for voting.

In my view, we should bus every citizen of Boston down to Washington for a gigantic barbeque out on the The Mall. I'll man the beer conseesion stand.

gw

- iambiguous

July 29, 2009 at 9:58pm

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"A Boston police officer was placed on administrative leave after he allegedly used a racial slur when referring to Henry Louis Gates Jr.

In a mass e-mail, Officer Justin Barrett, 36, called Gates a "jungle monkey," according to a law enforcement source."

He should have been fired, period.

Well, at least he not a Cambridge cop.

- J. Dyer

July 29, 2009 at 11:10pm

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A white Boston police officer is a racist? Stop the presses!

- WoodyBombay

July 30, 2009 at 12:12am

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"He should have been fired, period."

Uh, the dude is a public employee.  He can't be fired without due process.  But, the Globe (at least the online version) reports the following:

"Barrett, a 36-year-old who has been on the job for two years, was stripped of his gun and badge yesterday and faces a termination hearing in the next week, said police spokeswoman Elaine Driscoll."  That sounds like he's on the fast track off the force.

- drwohl

July 30, 2009 at 12:57am

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I'm just looking forward to the endless litigation wherein the officer defends his first amendment rights to say what the hell he likes in an email, mass or otherwise.  Assuming of course that it wasn't an offical police email address.  If it was, it seems to me he'll sink from view like a badly torpedoed warship.

- ironyroad

July 30, 2009 at 1:13am

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Jason, thanks for calling this like it is.

This is stupidity.

While it sounds racist, andcertainly can be interpreted that way, a better analysis is the total lack of thought.

America for some reason underestimates stupidity as a cause for a lot of events, but really it's everywhere.

- CRS9TNR

July 30, 2009 at 9:26am

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Maybe this can be another teachable moment!

- selish70

July 30, 2009 at 9:26am

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ironyroad said:

"I'm just looking forward to the endless litigation wherein the officer defends his first amendment rights to say what the hell he likes in an email, mass or otherwise."

Not a free spech issue, Irony, since a police department like the military has a code of behavior that its members must follow.

Not showing hatred and contempt  for the people you are supposed to protect is surely a top priority.

- J. Dyer

July 30, 2009 at 10:18am

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"Jungle monkey"? Anyone in America still talks like that? I'm honestly kind of shocked -- especially given the guy's age. I figured that in order even to think the words "jungle monkey," a person had to be at least 70 years old, probably either Southern or very rural Midwestern, and possibly also be speaking in the year 1958. Without actually subscribing to white supremacist periodicals, how does a Gen Xer even encounter the phrase "jungle monkey" with enough frequency for it to come to mind when writing an email?

From a purely linguistic point of view, the use of "jungle monkey" suggests to me this is an example of neither run-of-the-mill American racialism nor mere stupidity, but rather a tip-of-the-iceberg slip from an actual white supremacist. If the guy had said "damn nigger" or "uppity black" or anything similarly vile but pedestrian, I'd be opposed to firing the man. But "jungle monkey" speaks to the likely presence of a much more comprehensive worldview that is incompatible with any public service under the Constitution of the United States.

- rhubarbs

July 30, 2009 at 10:26am

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Hey CRS9TNR

"While it sounds racist, andcertainly can be interpreted that way, a better analysis is the total lack of thought"

There is nothing that says you can't be stupid and racist at the same time.  Sure it was stupid to send a mass email with a racial slur...but its also racist..why would you even say something like that if it wasn't.  

- lisap1999

July 30, 2009 at 11:09am

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JD -- I agree, hence my caveat about whose email it was.  I can see him being disciplined and let go, but still potentially winning a civil suit later on that will leave him with $$ in the bank.  But again there's stuff we don't know -- if he was emailing from a private address and all his recipients were non-institutional . . . ?  Maybe someone knows admin law around here, or even free speech issues as they impinge upon civil servants in their leisure time.

Rhubarbs, I had the same thought.  In fact, the term I remember from the UK ages ago is "jungle bunny," which had not only a racist edge (I don't like uppity black guys) but also a racialist one (they are closer to animals than "we" are).  Whereas monkeys belong in the jungle, bunnies don't -- it managed to work an an extra layer of contempt.  I'm curious about whether this guy has some kind of record of edgy conversational topics at work.  In a few blue-collar jobs I had back in the day, there was often one guy who everyone (no effete liberals they) had pegged as a weird neo-nazi or similar.  They didn't argue with him, but he was treated as a bore with a one-track mind.

- ironyroad

July 30, 2009 at 11:36am

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Rhubs, just check out urbandictionary.com for all sorts of racially unenlightened references that were most likely posted thereby by 20-something and 30-something Americans.

- wildboy

July 30, 2009 at 11:55am

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I never heard the term "jungle monkey" when I was in service and in the South. I heard plenty of racial insults, such as "jungle bunny" etc, but never that one.

My impression is that the stupid ass Neanderthal Boston cop got his insults from some racists web site.

- J. Dyer

July 30, 2009 at 11:58am

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As Colbert said last night: "Why are we asking what the state of racism is in this country?  I always thought it was Alabama."

- mghogwild

July 30, 2009 at 12:25pm

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It's from a Yahoo email address, so probably personal but sent to a writer at the Boston Globe (as well as some of his National Guard pals) so he's certainly not in the "just a private communication expressing personal views" category.  I'm not well-versed in this area of the law but think he could bring a case if terminated.  Whether he'd win is another story.  (And since he's now publicly apologized, I don't know that he'd try to sue.)  There were NYC firefighters or policemen who were fired for racially insensitive costumes in a parade on Long Island; Bloomberg fired them; and they sued and were re-instated.  (Someone please chime in if I have these details wrong.)

I recommend reading the whole email (link is on Andrew Sullivan's blog and I'm sure elsewhere too).  It's so over the top it almost could have been written by a writer for the "Daily Show" or Colbert, to represent the "white man is the victim," "libruls are evil, don't love our country," type of crap that is spewed on right-wing radio daily (and I guess on Fox too).    

- shellski

July 30, 2009 at 2:20pm

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"There were NYC firefighters or policemen who were fired for racially insensitive costumes in a parade on Long Island; Bloomberg fired them; and they sued and were re-instated."

Maybe so, Shellski, but this is a little more serious since there is an implied threat to Professor Gates in the e-mail.

- J. Dyer

July 30, 2009 at 3:51pm

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Lisap1999 - You can do a racist act like call someone names, and not be a racist.  Most likely in this instance he was trying to be funny and wasn't.

Yes someone can be both stupid and racist.

But the reason I try and avoid calling someone a racist is that I do not know them and try and avoid an inflammatory insult.

In the late 1930's President Roosevelt nominated a Judge to the Supreme Court who had previously been a member of the Ku Klux Klan.  Father Coughlin called the President Stupid and attacked him as Anti-Catholic.  The Bishop took Father Coughlin out for a discussion and told him, the President may have done a stupid act in nominating this judge, but he was not stupid, or anti-catholic.  Father Coughlin apologized to the President.

I think America is too reflexively accusing people of racism without facts and weakening the accusation and in a way watering down the term.  If everybody is a Racist, then no one is a Racist.

- CRS9TNR

July 30, 2009 at 5:24pm

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Remember the Boston cop who wrote the racist email about Gates-gate? He's suing : He's demanding

- Anonymous

August 5, 2009 at 10:27am

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