There are many reasons to boycott China, not least of which is its treatment of the Uyghurs; an unofficial U.K. tribunal this week said Chinese President Xi Jinping is responsible for “genocide, crimes against humanity and torture” of minorities in Xinjiang.
Add to the list the mysterious and alarming case of Chinese tennis star Peng Shuai, who disappeared for two weeks after publicly accusing Zhang Gaoli, a member of China’s ruling committee, of sexual assault. Within 20 minutes of her post on China’s equivalent of Twitter, government censors scrambled to scrub any mention of it from the Internet, as the New York Times reported Friday. China’s efforts to deny anything was amiss by posting photos and videos of Peng were clumsy and ineffective and quickly ridiculed by the twitterverse.
Earlier this month, the Women’s Tennis Association took the brave step of suspending all tournaments in China in protest of her obvious detention and censoring.
“While we now know where Peng is, I have serious doubts that she is free, safe and not subject to censorship, coercion and intimidation,” Steve Simon, chief executive of the Women’s Tennis Association, said in a statement as reported by the New York Times. “If powerful people can suppress the voices of women and sweep allegations of sexual assault under the rug, then the basis on which the WTA was founded — equality for women — would suffer an immense setback. I will not and cannot let that happen to the WTA and its players.”
So far, the WTA is the only major sports organization to announce a boycott of China, but the organizers of Gay Games 11, scheduled for 2023 in Hong Kong, should be next.
Gay Games organizers excitedly announced a new logo for the 2023 Games two weeks ago, adding the colors of the Progress Pride flag to recognize communities of color. But so far those same organizers are silent on the plight of Peng, a woman of color herself, and a fellow athlete who was targeted by China for making an accusation of assault.
When asked by the Blade if the Federation of Gay Games would consider a boycott of China, it issued a cowardly statement that ignored the central question of Peng’s plight and well being.
“The Federation of Gay Games continues to monitor the situation in Hong Kong regarding COVID-19, the National Security Law and all other aspects that affect the safety and security of our event,” Sean Fitzgerald, co-president of the Federation of Gay Games, told the Blade in a statement. “We are committed to hosting Gay Games 11 in Hong Kong in November 2023.”
The Federation of Gay Games’s claims of supporting people of color and athletes of color ring hollow when its leaders won’t even mention Peng’s name in response to a direct question about her plight.
The Federation should reconsider its posture, denounce China’s treatment and censorship of Peng, and move Gay Games 11 to another locale in protest.
Boycotts are divisive tactics and one Hong Kong LGBTQ activist this week told the Blade she doesn’t support the idea. “In Hong Kong, the team behind Gay Games has really worked tirelessly to bring it to Hong Kong and it will be a very good opportunity to showcase diversity and people working together and the human spirit at its best,” Gigi Chao told the Blade.
But what does it say about the queer community if we fail to take a stand even after the WTA has acted so boldly and decisively in its own boycott? The Biden administration on Monday announced a diplomatic boycott of the 2022 Winter Olympics that are slated to take place in Beijing in February. A Gay Games boycott would be consistent with our own government’s efforts to hold China accountable for Peng, the Uyghurs, and other human rights abuses.
The Federation of Gay Games has an opportunity to stand in solidarity with the WTA and Peng and send a powerful message that the LGBTQ community will not reward a regime that engages in overt censorship while covering up allegations of sexual assault by sending hundreds of athletes and millions of dollars to Hong Kong in 2023.
A gay man was brutally beaten with a metal pipe and robbed of his walker while bystanders ignored him in Brooklyn, New York.
More than a month since the attack in his hometown of Coney Island, Jawhar Edwards still has a swollen eye after his eye socket was broken when a man and a woman battered him and threatened to kill him.
As he ducked out of a birthday honouring his late godmother, Edwards went to pass out food to the homeless on the boardwalk by 19th and 21st Streets on 4 November at around 12:30am.
That’s when two people targeted him because he is gay, he told FOX 5 New York, taking off with his mobile phone, coat, money and walker.
The attacked called him a “f****t” and swung at his eye with a metal pole, shattering his eye socket and damaging his vision. He was left writhing in pain on the boardwalk as bystanders simply strolled past, doing nothing.
First responders arrived and brought him to Kings County Hospital to undergo multiple surgeries on his eye.
The New York Police Department arrested Infenent Millington, a 21-year-old homeless man, on Friday (10 December). Millington has been charged with second-degree robbery.
For the last three years, Edwards has gone out to the boardwalk to feed homeless folk at around 10pm.
“I went down to feed the homeless,” Edwards told the outlet.
“In return, I got assaulted, I got gay-bashed, I got robbed of my belongings. I got called a [slur], I got told: ‘If I see you again, I am going to kill you’.”
At a Friday rally organised by assembly member Mathylde Frontus outside her Mermaid Avenue office, Edwards urged law enforcement to treat the incident as a hate crime.
Edwards knows homophobia all too well. It was the third time he has been attacked because of his sexuality, he said. In 2018, a subway rider hurled homophobic insults at him because he bumped into him.
His story, however, echoes a frightening pattern in New York City. According to data from the NYPD, anti-LGBT+ hate crimes have surged a staggering 139 per cent this year alone.
“[Edwards] is not hurting anyone,” Ann Valdez, a community leader, said, Gay City News reported.
“He’s not bothering anyone. He went out there to feed the homeless. He’s not being paid for that.
“He’s doing that out of the kindness of his heart. My question for Coney Island is: ‘Where is your heart?’”
Since 2001, at least 97 people have been arrested under Virginia laws that criminalize people living with HIV, hepatitis B, and syphilis, according to a new report by the Williams Institute at UCLA School of Law. HIV-related crimes are disproportionately enforced on the basis of race and sex, with Black men being the most likely to be arrested and convicted.
Using data obtained from the Criminal Justice Information Services Division of the Virginia Department of State, researchers found that charges were filed in over 70 percent of HIV-related arrests in Virginia and more than half of them resulted in a guilty outcome, resulting in sentences averaging 2.1 years.
HIV criminalization is a term used to describe laws that either criminalize otherwise legal conduct or increase the penalties for illegal conduct based upon a person’s HIV-positive status. More than two-thirds of U.S. states and territories have enacted HIV criminal laws.
Until this year, Virginia’s HIV criminalization statute contained a felony provision — which prohibited people living with HIV, Hepatitis B, or syphilis from engaging in sexual activity of any kind with the intent to transmit the infection — and a misdemeanor charge for engaging in sexual activity without disclosing a positive status.
“In reality, people have been charged with felony crimes under Virginia’s HIV criminal laws simply for not disclosing their status,” said lead author Nathan Cisneros, HIV Criminalization Analyst at the Williams Institute. “For two decades, Virginia law has singled out people living with HIV for criminal prosecution without requiring actual transmission or even the possibility of transmission. Moreover, the law ignored whether the person living with HIV is in treatment and virally suppressed, and therefore cannot transmit HIV.”
KEY FINDINGS
At least 97 people in Virginia have been arrested for HIV-related criminal offenses since 2001.
Black people account for 20 percent of Virginia’s population, but 58 percent of the state’s people living with HIV, and 68 percent of all those arrested for HIV-related offenses.
Men comprise 75 percent of people living with HIV in Virginia, but 87 percent of people arrested for HIV-related offenses.
Black men are 40 percent of people living with HIV in Virginia, but 59 percent of all people arrested for HIV-related offenses.
Nearly one-fifth (18 percent) of those arrested for HIV-related crimes had no other criminal history.
Charges were filed in over 70 percent of HIV-related arrests in Virginia. And over half (54 percent) of all charges filed resulted in a guilty outcome.
Guilty outcomes resulted in an average sentence of 2.1 years.
Incarcerating people for HIV-related offenses has cost Virginia at least $3.2 million.
Virginia is one of four states, including Missouri, Illinois, and Nevada, to modernize its HIV criminal laws in 2021. Virginia’s new law only criminalizes actual, intentional transmission, which remains a felony, and it removes HIV-specific language. Virginia also revised its donation law to align with the federal HIV Organ Policy Equity Act.
More than 600 best-selling authors, publishers, bookstore owners and advocacy groups Wednesday condemned the recent wave of LGBTQ- and race-related book bans in public school libraries across the country.
Over the last several weeks, lawmakers, school officials and parents in at least 10 states — including New York, Texas and Virginia — have sought to rid books about the lived experiences of Black and LGBTQ people from elementary, middle and high schools.
Some who are challenging the books argue that they contain graphic illustrations of LGBTQ sexual experiences or portray an unflattering image of the country’s history with race.
But in a joint statement, signatories — led by the National Coalition Against Censorship, an alliance of 57 American nonprofit groups that advocate for free expression — called the effort to ban the books an “organized political attack” that “threatens the education of America’s children.”
“Libraries offer students the opportunity to encounter books and other material that they might otherwise never see and the freedom to make their own choices about what to read,” the statement read. “Denying young people this freedom to explore — often on the basis of a single controversial passage cited out of context — will limit not only what they can learn but who they can become.”
The group included more than 50 independent bookstores, nearly 80 advocacy groups, top American publishing companies (including Penguin Random House and Scholastic) and dozens of authors, including bestselling children’s book author Judy Blume.
Books about race, sexual orientation and gender identity have historically been challenged in schools, but over the last several weeks, school libraries have seen a surge of opposition.
Last month, the governors of Texas and South Carolina urged state school officials to ban several books that contain “pornography” and “obscene” content. A school board member in Flagler County, Florida, filed a criminal report with local authorities after finding copies of “All Boys Aren’t Blue” —a young-adult memoir detailing the trials of being a Black queer boy — in her district’s school libraries. And in Virginia’s Spotsylvania County, school board members voted to have books with “sexually explicit” material removed from school library shelves, with two board members calling for the books to be incinerated.
Among the books that have been most frequently challenged in recent weeks include Toni Morrison’s “The Bluest Eye,” George M. Johnson’s “All Boys Aren’t Blue” and Maia Kobabe’s “Gender Queer.”
“I’ve worked at ALA for two decades now, and I’ve never seen this volume of challenges come in,” she said. “The impact will fall to those students who desperately want and need books that reflect their lives, that answer questions about their identity, about their experiences that they always desperately need and often feel that they can’t talk to adults about.”
Queer advocates who signed on to the statement echoed Caldwell-Stone’s concerns with regards for the LGBTQ community.
“Every LGBTQ young person needs to see themselves in stories about their lives, to let them know they belong just as they are,” Sarah Kate Ellis, the president and CEO of GLAAD, an LGBTQ media advocacy organization, said in a statement. “All leaders must speak up against hostile rhetoric and behavior targeting vulnerable young people and books about their lives, and prioritize protecting children and safe spaces for all to learn.”
Author Kelly Yang signed on to the statement after her children’s novel “Front Desk,” about a Chinese-immigrant experience, was challenged by school administrators in Plainedge, New York, and York County, Pennsylvania, in September.
She said she was pushing back because growing up, she never saw herself represented in books.
“I remember living through that and feeling so incredibly lonely,” Yang said. “We finally made this great progress and the fact that this can be so easily wiped out by these book bans, and to have all of these books be pulled and in some cases burned, it sort of feels like an existential crisis. It just feels like we could be erased at any moment, and that’s a dehumanizing feeling.”
n Thursday, December 16, 2021, at 6pm, at the Shea Federal Building, 777 Sonoma Ave., in Santa Rosa, Immigrants and allies will hold a public “Speak-Out” to let California’s U.S. Senators know that they expect passage of a Path To Citizenship for Christmas, as President Biden and the Democrats promised. At 7pm, they will walk with lights to the Old Courthouse Square, in downtown Santa Rosa, to show holiday shoppers, elected officials and the community at large that undocumented residents of Sonoma County demand legalization as soon as possible.
“It is difficult for the undocumented community to celebrate the holidays when so many of us still can’t travel to see our families and loved ones in our home countries,” states Socorro Diaz, Leader of ALMAS, an Immigrant & Indigenous women’s organization which empowers workers through education and political campaigns. “We need to end the criminalization of essential workers in this country, and it needs to happen before Christmas,” she adds.
“The “Build Back Better” Bill is the closest we’ve gotten to achieving a Path To Citizenship,” says Patricia Garibay, also a Leader of ALMAS. “The Democrats must act boldly and swiftly and deliver legalization to us for Christmas this year.”
The “Build Back Better” Bill recently passed the U.S. House of Representatives and is currently being considered by the U.S. Senate as a budget reconciliation bill. Although the Senate Parliamentarian announced that a Path To Citizenship should not be included in a budget bill, Immigrant communities and Democrats wish to override the Parliamentarian or include some type of “temporary status” for the country’s 12 million undocumented.
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EN ESPANOL:
Inmigrantes del Condado de Sonoma Organizan un “Micrófono Abierto” y Caminata Alrededor de Los Compradores de Regalos Navideños Para Exigir Que el Senado Pase Para Navidad la Propuesta de Ley “Build Back Better” Que Contiene Estatus Legal Para Los Indocumentados del País.
El Jueves, Diciembre 16, 2021, a las 6pm, en el Edificio Federal Shea, 777 Sonoma Ave., en Santa Rosa, Inmigrantes y aliados tendrán un “Micrófono Abierto” para informarles a los Senadores de California que esperan que pasen un Camino a la Ciudadanía para Navidad, como el Presidente Biden y los Demócratas prometieron. A las 7pm, caminarán con luces al Old Courthouse Square, en el centro de Santa Rosa, para mostrarles a los compradores, políticos y la comunidad entera que residentes indocumentados del Condado de Sonoma exigen la legalización lo más pronto posible.
“Es difícil para la comunidad indocumentada celebrar las Navidades cuando tantos de nosotros aún no podemos viajar para ver a nuestras familias y seres queridos en nuestros países de origen,” dice Socorro Diaz, Lider de ALMAS, una organización de mujeres Inmigrantes e Indígenas que empodera a las trabajadoras a través de información y campañas políticas. “Debemos poner fin a la criminalización de trabajadores esenciales en este país, y necesita tomar lugar antes de la Navidad,” ella agrega.
“La propuesta de ley “Build Back Better” es lo más cercano que hemos llegado para lograr un Camino a la Ciudadanía,” dice Patricia Garibay, también Lider de ALMAS. “Los demócratas deben actuar con valor y rápidamente para darnos una legalización esta Navidad.”
La propuesta de ley “Build Back Better” recientemente pasó por la Cámara de Representantes de los EEUU y ahora está siendo considerada por el Senado EEUU como una propuesta presupuestal. Aunque la Parlamentaria del Senado anunció que un Camino a la Ciudadanía no debe ser incluido en una propuesta presupuestal, comunidades Inmigrantes y Demócratas quieren rechazar esta conclusión o incluir un tipo de “estatus temporal” para los 12 millones de indocumentados en este país.
Last week, world leaders from government, civil society, and the private sector gathered virtually for the Summit for Democracy to set forth an affirmative agenda for democratic renewal and to tackle today’s greatest threats to democracy. In advance of the summit, the Council for Global Equality—a coalition of LGBTQI advocacy organizations of which the Center for American Progress is a proud member—in collaboration with F&M Global Barometers published report cards assessing the extent to which participating states have fulfilled their obligations to ensure LGBTQI+ people are full citizens and able to contribute to and benefit from democratic institutions. Unfortunately, the United States’ score on the human rights of LGBTQI+ people is in critical need of improvement. While we scored a 70 percent on basic human rights—a C- if our country were a school—we received failing grades in protecting LGBTQI+ Americans from violence and upholding the socioeconomic rights of LGBTQI+ Americans. We clearly need to catch up on our homework.
Why the terrible scores? A key reason is that LGBTQI+ Americans continue to lack comprehensive nondiscrimination protections at the federal level, leaving them vulnerable to discrimination in key areas of life such as taxpayer-funded programs like emergency shelters and in stores and restaurants. On top of that, this year marked the most anti-LGBTQI+ state legislative session in history, with transphobic attacks lodged at our most vulnerable community members: our children. From blocking access to necessary medical care, to prohibiting transgender kids from joining school sports teams, to erasing all mention of the existence of LGBTQI+ people from textbooks, more than 100 bills targeting transgender people were introduced in state legislatures last session. And school districts across the country are racing to pull LGBTQI+ -themed books and authors from library shelves. These attacks against the basic rights and dignity of LGBTQI+ people, and transgender people, in particular, have devastating consequences.
It should come as no surprise that, according to a 2020 survey by the Center for American Progress, over half of transgender people reported avoiding public spaces like stores and restaurants in order to avoid the trauma of discrimination. In addition to being the most anti-trans legislative session, 2021 is also the deadliest year on record for transgender and gender-nonconforming people, with over 50 reported killings of transgender or gender-nonconforming people, the majority of whom were Black and brown transgender women.
According to the Public Religion Research Institute, over 80 percent of Americans support protections for LGBTQI+ Americans such as those found in the Equality Act, which passed the House in early 2021 yet still awaits a vote in the Senate. The bill’s provisions also have support from majorities in every state across the country, regardless of political ideology or faith tradition. Despite the protections’ broad popularity, support among elected officials lags behind that of the people they are supposed to represent. Congress’ failure to enact massively popular legislation advancing LGBTQI+ equality while state legislatures launched attacks on transgender children emphasizes how our country’s crisis in democracy impacts the basic rights of LGBTQI+ Americans. It also is reflected in our country’s dismal LGBTQI grades as compared to other countries participating in the Summit for Democracy this week. Unsurprisingly, research has shown a strong correlation between the strength of a country’s democratic institutions and the legal rights of its LGBTQI+ citizens. We are also coming to understand that the inverse is also true: The full and inclusive participation of LGBTQI+ citizens strengthens democratic institutions and the democratic process itself.
The Summit for Democracy is not the end but the launch of a year of action. LGBTQI+ Americans need the Senate to get to work and bring the country closer to realizing its founding ideals by passing the Equality Act. And to ensure our elected leaders better represent the American public, Congress should also pass the Freedom to Vote Act, which would strengthen the integrity of our elections and the John R. Lewis Voting Rights Advancement Act, which would restore and strengthen the Voting Rights Act of 1965. Let’s work together to hold our elected representatives accountable for strengthening our democracy for all Americans and bring home straight As next year.
Sharita Gruberg is the vice president of the LGBTQI+ Research and Communications Project at the Center for American Progress. Mark Bromley is the chair of the Council for Global Equality.
A 12-year-old boy took his own life after being tortured by bullies and told he would go to Hell because he is gay.
Eli Fritchley was a seventh-grader from Shelbyville, Tennessee, who adored Spongebob Squarepantsand played the trombone.
He died by suicide on 28 November, no longer able to bear the “pain and torture” from kids at his school, his parents said.
Eli was never afraid to be himself, Debbey and Steve Fritchley told WKRN-TV, and they were in awe at his bravery in the face of bullies at his school, Cascades Muddle School in Bedford County.
“He was told because he didn’t necessarily have a religion and he said he was gay that was going to Hell,” Debbey told the local station. “They told him that quite often.”
She added that Eli wore the same Spongebob sweater every day – even doing the laundry himself – and painted his nails. “I think probably because he was in the same clothes every single day that they used that as a weapon,” she added.
Eli’s father, Steve, said: “It was really abusive. I don’t think it was ever physical. I think it was just words, but words hurt.
“They really hurt. This has just blindsided us. This is something we would have never, ever expected.”
Though his parents knew he was being bullied, neither Debbey nor Steve knew the extent of how Eli was feeling.
“We all failed him,” Debbey said. “We all failed him. It’s as simple as that.”
Family of Eli Fritchley raise thousands so ‘this terrible tragedy doesn’t happen again’
The story of Eli Fritchley echoes a frightening pattern for queer youth who are more than four times as likely to attempt suicide than their straight, cisgender peers, according to LGBT+ suicide-prevention charity The Trevor Project.
More than one in two queer youth have been bullied in person or electronically, it adds.
Bedford County School district officials were left “shocked” and “devastated” by the news of Eli’s passing. Working together with his grieving parents, superintendent Tammy Garrett said more social and emotional education programs will be rolled out across local schools.
“Anytime someone takes his or her life, especially a child, it is nearly unbearable,” Garrett said in a statement.
“Our hearts go out to his parents and family as they deal with this terrible loss.”
Now Fritchley’s parents are working to ensure that no child or parent goes through what their family did. “I honestly think education, education, education for everyone where bullying is concerned,” Debbey said, “because it is a problem.
“Not just in Bedford County. It’s a problem everywhere.”
The Fritchley family, with the help of Penalties Sports Bar & Grill, have created a GoFundMe paid to do just that.
Tens of thousands of dollars have poured into the fundraiser to “go towards other kids and families […] so that this terrible tragedy doesn’t have to happen again”, ” fund organiser and family friend Shondelle Lewis wrote.
“As parents and grandparents, it is our responsibility to teach our children to love, not hate; to be kind, not mean; to understand that we are all different in our own ways and that is OK.”
“Hug your children and your grandchildren, tell them this world doesn’t have to be so full of evil because, in the end, evil never wins.”
Suicide is preventable. Readers who are affected by the issues raised in this story are encouraged to contact Samaritans on 116 123 (www.samaritans.org), or Mind on 0300 123 3393 (www.mind.org.uk). Readers in the US are encouraged to contact theNational Suicide Prevention Line on 1-800-273-8255.
“The Obama Portraits Tour” and “Black American Portraits” exhibits at LACMA not only celebrate portraiture, but also queer Black artists and subjects.
In the West Coast presentation of “The Obama Portraits Tour,” Kehinde Wiley’s Barack Obama and Amy Sherald’s Michelle LaVaughn Robinson Obama are on loan from the Smithsonian’s National Portrait Gallery, and on view at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art through Jan. 2.
“Barack Obama” by Kehinde Wiley, oil on canvas, 2018; “Michelle LaVaughn Robinson Obama” by Amy Sherald, oil on linen, 2018. (Kehinde Wiley and Amy Sherald)
Wiley, who identifies as gay, was the first Black artist to paint an official presidential portrait for the Smithsonian National Portrait Gallery when Obama selected him in 2018.
Wiley’s “Portrait of a Young Man,” his eagerly anticipated reimagining of Gainsborough’s iconic 1770 painting “The Blue Boy,” is on display at The Huntington. Wiley’s work, which takes the name that Thomas Gainsborough initially used, incorporates the Grand Manner portraiture technique and style, but in a contemporary setting.
“The Portrait Gallery’s official portraits of President Barack Obama by Kehinde Wiley and First Lady Michelle Obama by Amy Sherald are powerful works of art,” Michael Govan, LACMA CEO, said in a statement. “The colors and styles of the paintings are a fresh departure from the history of presidential portraiture, and these have become two of the most recognized artworks in the world.”
To complement “The Obama Portraits Tour,” “Black American Portraits” is an exhibit that reframes portraiture to center Black American subjects, sitters, and spaces. It features 140 works mainly drawn from the museum’s permanent collection.
The picture above it showed several Black men who had been lynched.
Another photo asked what someone should do if their girlfriend was having an affair with a Black man. The answer, according to the caption, was to break “a tail light on his car so the police will stop him and shoot him.”
Someone else sent a picture of a candy cane, a Christmas tree ornament, a star for the top of the tree and an “enslaved person.”
“Which one doesn’t belong?” the caption asked.
“You don’t hang the star,” someone wrote back.
The comments represent a sliver of a trove of racist text messages exchanged by more than a dozen current and former Torrance police officers and recruits.
Through interviews with sources with direct knowledge of the investigation, public records requests and a review of district attorney’s office records, The Times examined some of the contents of the until-now secret texts and identified a dozen Torrance police officers under investigation for exchanging them.
The broad scope of the racist text conversations, which prosecutors said went on for years, has created a crisis for the Torrance Police Department and could jeopardize hundreds of criminal cases in which the officers either testified or made arrests. California Atty. Gen. Rob Bonta said Wednesday his office will investigate the department in the wake of the scandal.
The officers’ comments spared no color or creed: They joked about “gassing” Jewish people, assaulting members of the LGBTQ community, using violence against suspects and lying during an investigation into a police shooting, according to district attorney’s office records reviewed by The Times.
Frequently, hateful comments were targeted at Black people. Officers called Black men “savages,”and several variations of the N-word, according to documents reviewed by The Times. The officers also shared instructions on how to tie a noose and a picture of a stuffed animal being lynched inside Torrance’s police headquarters, according to the documents.
While no officers currently face criminal charges in direct relation to the text messages, the racist exchanges have led to the dismissal of at least 85 criminal cases involving the officers implicated in the scandal. County prosecutors had tossed 35 felony cases as of mid-November, and the Torrance city attorney’s office has dismissed an additional 50, officials said.
In total, the officers were listed as potential witnesses in nearly 1,400 cases in the last decade, according to district attorney’s records The Times obtained through a public records request. The officers did not necessarily testify in each case, so it’s unclear how many of those cases could be affected.
Still, in the span of one week in November, the Los Angeles County public defender’s office received about 300 letters from prosecutors disclosing potential misconduct by officers implicated in the scandal, said Judith Green, an office spokeswoman.
Prosecutors are reviewing dozens of additional cases linked to the officers, said Diana Teran, a special advisor to Los Angeles County Dist. Atty. George Gascón. The review will prioritize active cases in which a defendant is still in custody and one of the officers implicated in the scandal was a “material witness.”
“So that could be, for example, a single police officer is in a patrol car and sees an individual on the sidewalk and then says he had a bulge in his pocket and then pats him down and then recovers a gun,” Teran said. “Without that officer, you couldn’t prove that case.”
Since 2013, the group of officers identified by The Times has been involved in at least seven serious use-of-force incidents in Torrance and Long Beach, including three that ended in the deaths of Black and Latino men, according to police use-of-force records and court filings. Although the officers’ actions were found to be justified in each case, experts say those cases should be reexamined in the context of the hateful messages.
“What those text messages revealed was an extraordinarily hostile attitude toward people of color, people who are nonbinary, people who have different sexual orientations,” said Walter Katz, a former independent police auditor in California who now serves as a vice president of criminal justice for research firm Arnold Ventures. “I don’t know that we can take anything they’ve said at face value.”
Two of the officers under investigation as part of the scandal — Anthony Chavez and Matthew Concannon — are also under investigation for the controversial 2018 slaying of Christopher DeAndre Mitchell, a Black car theft suspect they fatally shot while he was holding an air rifle. Chavez and Concannon were cleared of wrongdoing by former Dist. Atty. Jackie Lacey, but the case is one of several that Gascón has hired a special prosecutor to review for possible criminal charges.
Several of the officers have also been named as defendants in lawsuits alleging excessive force, false arrest and wrongful death, court filings show. In some of those cases, the plaintiffs are members of the same ethnic groups the officers espoused hatred for in the texts.
In addition to Weldin, Tomsic and Chandler, The Times has reviewed district attorney’s records detailing racist texts or images shared by six other police officers: Blake Williams, Brian Kawamoto, Joshua Satterfield, Omar Alonso, Christopher Allen-Young and Long Beach Police Officer Maxwell Schroeder, who is a former Torrance police recruit.
Concannon, Chavez and fellow Torrance Police Officers Andrew Kissinger and Enrique Villegas are also under investigation as part of the scandal, according to three people with direct knowledge of the case and a review of district attorney’s records. The Times did not independently view documentation of racist text messages sent by any of those four officers, though the newspaper did review a document that showed Concannon sent messages that are part of the investigation.
The identities of all 13 officers named in this article were confirmed by three people with direct knowledge of the case and by reviewing district attorney’s records that detailed some of the officers’ comments. Those people spoke on the condition of anonymity so they could candidly discuss an ongoing investigation.
The text messages were not on one continuous thread, according to two of the sources.Additional officers received the texts but did not interact with them in any way, so they are not considered under investigation,those sources said.
The exact number of officers involved in the scandal is unclear. Sgt. Mark Ponegalek, a Torrance police spokesman, could not confirm or deny the identities of the officers involved, but said 15 have been placed on administrative leave in relation to the scandal.
That number did not include Tomsic, Weldin, or Schroeder, he said. The Times identified 13 officers in its investigation, including Tomsic, Weldin and Schroeder, meaning there are an additional five Torrance officers under investigation whose identities remain unknown to the public.
A Long Beach police spokesman said Schroeder was assigned to desk duty pending the outcome of an internal investigation, but would not say why.
The officers either declined to comment through their attorneys or did not respond to messages left by The Times at their homes or through their union, the Torrance Police Officers Assn., which represents rank-and-file officers. An attorney for the union said the officers were barred from commenting on the investigation.
“The current administrative investigations are confidential. As such, we do not have access to facts of the underlying investigation, or the alleged inappropriate materials. We expect that as police officers, our members should be treated like any other citizen — considered innocent until proven guilty,” the union said in a statement. “Our members have a right to due process and should be protected from illegal and unnecessary intrusion into their private lives.”
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The text messages might have remained hidden if not for the alleged bizarre actions of Tomsic and Weldin in January 2020.
The two officers responded to a report of mail theft in the South Bay city and directed a car linked to the crime to be towed from the scene, authorities said. The pair allegedly spray-painted a swastika and a “happy face” inside the vehicle, according to a criminal complaint.
District attorney’s records reviewed by The Times showed Tomsic sent a slew of racist images and messages, including a picture of former President Reagan feeding a monkey with a caption stating Reagan “used to babysit [former President] Obama.”
Another picture he sent referred to an “African American baby” as a “Pet Niguana,” according to the records, and he also sent a message mocking the fact that he was the subject of a racial profiling complaint.
“So we totally racially profiled his ass, haha … Shopping at 7/11 while Black, he didn’t know the rules lol,” Tomsic wrote, according to the records.
Torrance police officials acquired evidence of the text message threads during their investigation of Weldin and Tomsic, according to Ponegalek, though he declined to give a specific timeline of when they obtained the data.
Gascón said he first became aware of the situation in July, when he was given a briefing about the pending vandalism charges.
“I questioned whether there was any other things that would lead us to believe that this is not sort of a single crime event,” he said. “I actually made some comments about how, generally, when someone does this kind of stuff, there are bigger patterns of behavior. So, I started asking if we had checked for text messages.”
Within weeks, Torrance police provided the district attorney’s office with more than 200 gigabytes of data, which showed the officers had been exchanging racist messages since at least 2018, according to Teran, the advisor to the district attorney. Gascón praised Torrance Police Chief Jeremiah Hart for moving quickly to provide information to prosecutors, noting he met resistance from police leaders when investigating similar scandals involving racist text messages among San Francisco officers.
Gascón said the texts are proof that some Torrance officers hate the communities they were hired to serve.
“It creates a tremendous amount of concern for me. We have a group of officers who, apparently in addition to harboring very biased and racist beliefs, also may be engaging in inappropriate force that could be illegal in some cases,” he said.
In the texts, the officers showed little concern about getting caught and even less about the citizens they were assigned to protect, routinely joking about using force and mocking internal affairs.
“We had to [expletive] her up because we knew he wouldn’t,” one officer wrote in one exchange about an altercation with a female suspect. “Don’t ask me where that lump on her forehead came from though.”
“Sometimes you’ve got to do things your own damn self,” Kawamoto replied, later adding a comment that he wanted to “always make Torrance great again,” a reference to former President Trump’s ubiquitous political slogan.
Kawamoto also referred to Black men as “savages” in the texts, according to district attorney’s records reviewed by The Times.
In another message reviewed by The Times, Alonso complained about the idea of having to work with a gay officer, and said he’d “straight punch” a member of the LGBTQ community, using a common slur for gay men.
Usually, conversations always seemed to circle back to vile insults or depictions of violence against Black people. After one officer shared a news article about someone being arrested for urinating on a Black child and calling them the N-word, Satterfield replied, “what’s the crime?” according to district attorney’s records reviewed by The Times.
From 2016 to 2019, Torrance police upheld just three citizen allegations of police misconduct and zero allegations of racial profiling made against officers, according to data submitted to the California attorney general’s office. Katz, the former independent police auditor, described those statistics as “concerningly low.”
“If citizen complaints are not taken seriously, it does increase the sense of impunity that officers who are inclined toward misconduct have,” he said.
Ponegalek argued that The Times’ analysis was incomplete, as it did not include statistics involving complaints filed by other officers. Torrance police sustained 35 out of 43 internally generated complaints of officer misconduct from 2016 to 2020, Ponegalek said. The department has also hired an outside law firm to conduct a review of the scandal, he said.
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Many of the officers under investigation as part of the scandal also have use-of-force histories involving the communities for which they expressed hatred.
Schroeder used a carotid restraint hold — sometimes referred to as a blood choke — to subdue a homeless Black man in a park in November 2018, according to Long Beach police records The Times obtained through a public records request. Schroeder initiated contact with the man because he was sleeping in a park after it closed, the records show, and used the choke to take him down after an altercation.
Long Beach police officials determined the use of force was justified, the records show. The homeless man was booked on suspicion of resisting arrest, being in the park after dark and possession of drug paraphernalia, according to a Long Beach police spokesman. Long Beach City Prosecutor Doug Haubert did not respond to repeated calls and e-mails seeking information about the criminal case against the homeless man.
According to the district attorney’s records reviewed by The Times, Schroeder sent one message in the texts reading “No Jews, No Blacks,” and made racist remarks about a child eating a watermelon.
Several of the Torrance officers under investigation as part of the scandal have also used serious or deadly force against Black and Latino men while on duty in recent years, according to district attorney’s records.
Chavez, Williams, Satterfield and Tomsic all opened fire on Michael Lopez in 2017 after a vehicle pursuit that started in Palos Verdes Estates. Lopez had been fleeing police in a truck, and the officers said he attempted to ram them when they opened fire, according to a district attorney’s office memo that determined the fatal shooting was justified.
One year later, Tomsic was one of several officers involved in a deadly altercation with Deautry Ross in the Del Amo Fashion Center, according to district attorney’s records. The officers were responding to calls from a mall employee who said Ross was walking through the building with a knife, muttering to himself. Ross fled from Torrance police when they responded, and became violent when they tried to arrest him, district attorney’s records show.
During the struggle, Tomsic said, Ross tried to gain control of his gun, according to a district attorney’s office memo clearing the officers of criminal liability. The officers hit Ross with a Taser and handcuffed him, but he continued to struggle, according to the report, which then described two officers kneeling on Ross’ shoulders.
Another officer then sat on Ross’ legs before others were able to “bind Ross’ arms and legs with a hobble restraint.”
Minutes later, firefighters on scene noted Ross’ pulse was beginning to weaken. He eventually went into cardiac arrest and was pronounced dead at a hospital a short time later. A knife was recovered at the scene.
Medical examiners ruled Ross died of cardiac arrest resulting from methamphetamine use and his struggle with the officers, according to autopsy records.
The most controversial incident involving officers linked to the racist text scandal is the 2018 shooting death of Christopher DeAndre Mitchell. The incident sparked significant protests — including one inside Torrance’s City Council chambers that led demonstrators to file excessive-force lawsuits against several of the officers The Times identified in this article — and remains under review by Gascón.
Mitchell, who was Black, was suspected of driving a stolen vehicle when he pulled into a Ralphs parking lot in Torrance in December 2018, according to a district attorney’s office memo clearing the officers of wrongdoing. Concannon and Chavez pulled in behind him, exited their vehicle and yelled “police!” Mitchell initially placed his hands on the steering wheel, according to the memo, but when the officers approached him, they noticed his hands move toward his lap where Concannon saw what he believed to be a firearm.
The officers repeatedly ordered Mitchell to get out of the car, but he did not comply, according to the report. The officers described the weapon, later determined to be a “break barrel air rifle,” as “pinched” between Mitchell’s legs, though neither alleged he grabbed it or pointed it at them before they opened fire.
Lacey cleared the officers of wrongdoing in all three deaths, but Gascón has reopened the investigation into Mitchell’s killing . He declined to offer a timetable on that review and would not say whether the officers involvement in the text scandal would affect that probe.
Katz said the text messages call into question the credibility of the officers’ accounts of any past use-of-force incidents involving Black or Latino suspects.
In the Mitchell case, that could be especially concerning. According to district attorney’s records reviewed by The Times, Concannon once sent a troubling text message referring to a deposition he gave in an “officer-involved shooting.”
“They believed our lies. Good job sticking to the script,” he wrote. “LMAO, that’s what they call a W.”
According to a Times review of public records, Concannon has shot only one person during his career: Christopher DeAndre Mitchell.
