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Messages of hate

By ERIC DEGGANS
Published June 26, 2005

The message came from someone called the Templar of Truth, posted to a message board on the local law enforcement-oriented Web site Leoaffairs.com. Claiming to be an area police officer with 12 years on the job, the Templar wrote of operating on "zero discretion mode" when dealing with people of color.

"I'm sick of walking on eggshells around so-called minorities," said the message, titled "I'm beyond fed up," displayed in a message board devoted to the St. Petersburg Police Department. "You idiots think we treat you worse than whites? WE'VE BEEN TREATING YOU BETTER!!

"Why are prisons full of blacks?. . . . Take away government housing and welfare and see these (expletive deleted) strive for more than a CNA (certified nursing assistant certification). I find myself writing that down as a black female's occupation even before I ask sometimes. Gotta keep the pay below the (welfare income) mark so they can have their free rent and 70-inch screen TV from the local Rent-a-Crib."

Leoaffairs was launched in 2002 by Tampa police Detective Chip DeBlock and retired Tampa police Sgt. Jim Preston. Once a simple site with information on whistleblower laws and internal affairs investigations, it has grown into an extensive online forum for law enforcement staffers working across Florida and in Los Angeles, Honolulu and Milwaukee.

More than two dozen other postings on the message board are full of racist language and homophobic insults as discussions veer from the issues of policing in poor, minority communities to a killer accused of targeting gay men in Tampa.

A poster named Tez noted, "I know that (most of) my domestic battery service calls have been black males beating the s-- out of there (sic) babies' momma. No, that's not a racist comment, it's just a fact."

In discussing local NAACP president Darryl Rouson's proposal that St. Petersburg's Midtown area secede from the city, Clarification wrote, "I saw the Midtown boundary mentioned. . . . Does that mean we can put a huge wall around it to keep all the animals in?"

Other posters have suggested new names for the seceded city could be Cracktown or Killwhiteyville, and one link posted to the site led to doctored photographs of a Hummer decked out as a "St. Uhurus'burg" police vehicle with noted black leader Al Sharpton designated the "Poleee Chief."

On a message board devoted to the Tampa police department, someone who suggested police might want to designate an officer as a liaison to the gay community was drowned in a litany of homophobic insults. "Just what TPD needs . . . someone to kiss a- for the Gays," offered one respondent. "I thought they took care of that department very well on their own."

Some postings are passionately critical of the St. Petersburg Times - with racially insulting diatribes aimed at journalists of color, including this writer. The insults are largely sparked by coverage of issues related to race and law enforcement, including the recent, controversial shooting of an unarmed black man by a white sheriff's deputy serving a search warrant in St. Petersburg.

Area police officers have posted milder messages to the site using their real names. For example, Gulfport Police Chief G. Curt Willocks posted a letter eventually sent to St. Petersburg Deputy Mayor Goliath Davis, taking issue with Davis' comments in a Times story about the shooting.

The question of who may be posting the worst comments is no small matter: Antidiscrimination policies at many area police departments would leave working officers vulnerable to discipline or termination if their true names were attached to racist rhetoric. St. Petersburg's official Police Department policies state, "The department will not permit, tolerate or condone acts of discrimination," defining discrimination to include anti-Semitism, homophobia, prejudice, sexism, stereotyping and racism.

With no way to know whether the most inflammatory posters are pranksters or genuine police officers, law enforcement officials in St. Petersburg fear their department's reputation has been seriously tarnished in cyberspace.

"The posting anonymously with no accountability . . . this is something I didn't want in my community, because I thought it would be poison," said St. Petersburg Police Chief Chuck Harmon. He said the department last year asked DeBlock and Preston to shut down the message board focused on the city's police.

DeBlock and Preston declined to return telephone messages seeking comment, though Preston said in an e-mail to the Times that free speech concerns prevent them from censoring racially insensitive messages.

In postings to the Web site, Preston has denounced questions about the site's racist content as "intimidation tactics." But in an e-mail to the Times, he said that, despite finding "some content controversial and disturbing," publishing the material might be educational.

"Leoaffairs.com is a forum, a palette upon which many express themselves as guaranteed by the freedoms enjoyed by all in this country," Preston wrote. He noted that the site generates 3-million visits monthly, making the monitoring of individual messages difficult. "While we may not like, condone or agree with what is posted . . . we can't just shut the window and hope the monster of racism will go away."

But Leoaffairs' own "Terms of Use" area tells visitors that by posting to the site "you agree that you will not submit messages to forums that are unlawful, threatening, obscene, vulgar, pornographic, profane or indecent." Last year, DeBlock removed postings from a prankster posing both as a wife abused by her policeman husband and a different individual offering explicit details on an officer's sexual proclivities.

"This is not a SLAM site, and the Forums should be used constructively," reads the Terms of Use. "Messages not requiring anonymous status, but being abused, are subject to deletion by System Moderators. Anonymous Messages are not granted the same right to exist that properly identified messages are."

So the question arises: Do DeBlock or Preston consider racist messages vulgar or indecent?

The topic is of particular concern given St. Petersburg's troubled history regarding race and policing issues.

If the incendiary anticop rhetoric wielded by the black-focused International People's Uhuru Movement is one extreme in this community debate, then Leoaffairs has distilled its ugly flip side - an environment where black culture is often equated with the worst in society and stereotypes such as the babymaking welfare queen are used as an excuse for harsh policing methods.

When Gulfport Police Chief Willocks was asked if he and other established police officers frequenting the site should challenge the racist messages posted there, he offered a surprising answer.

He agreed.

"Frankly, no one has suggested that to me," said Willocks, who acknowledged that he "frequently" reads the message board. "There are probably some racist . . . insulting comments there. Maybe the appropriate thing to do is to post under my name (and criticize them)."

Hours after his interview with the Times, Willocks had posted a new message to the Leoaffairs site. "This is a tough enough job without some anonymous morons representing dedicated police officers," he wrote, in part. "We, as police officials, do have a responsibility to object when our citizens are subjected to cruel remarks and I know that these insulting diatribes are not representative of the police profession."

Willocks admitted it was a point he had not considered: When St. Petersburg Deputy Mayor Davis criticized a fellow law enforcement officer, the Gulfport chief was quick to post a message excoriating his comments. But Willocks had read the racist messages posted to Leoaffairs and never thought to challenge them publicly.

Still, the chief denied his own oversight might indicate any larger problem in understanding the concerns of people of color regarding law enforcement.

"I don't think there's an issue here that I don't get. . . . Anyone who wrote such things . . . they would definitely not work for me," said Willocks, who also noted that any impostor could be placing messages on the site. "I work with St. Petersburg police officers every day. . . . I don't see a racist attitude."

Harmon said he was certain the message board's racist postings came from pranksters trying to provoke a reaction.

"I'm confident I don't have people working for me who believe that way . . . (and) if I can find out who is doing this and they work for me, I will deal with them," he said. "But whether or not it's the truth, it's what some people might believe of us. And it doesn't reflect what we do."

Eric Deggans is a Times editorial writer. He can be reached at 727 893-8521 or deggans@sptimes.com

[Last modified June 24, 2005, 18:19:01]