ANTIOCH — They insisted the Antioch cops were dirty all along, that the officers targeted and mocked their sons and fiancés and loved ones because they were Black, but no one believed them.
When Kathryn Wade heard the news Thursday morning that six Antioch officers were among the 10 indicted in a wide-ranging police corruption scandal in federal court Thursday — with reams of racist text messages bolstering some of the charges — she broke into tears. Her son, she said, had been beaten five times by Antioch police, who joked about it.
“Thank you, Jesus,” she said. “I know God answered my prayers because we weren’t just saying this was happening, we weren’t just putting in complaints, I wasn’t just protesting, I wasn’t going to the City Council meetings, writing letters to the Board of Supervisors for nothing. I did this because I knew that corruption was happening, because it was happening to my son and my family.”
For those who say they suffered in these east Contra Costa County communities at the hands of Antioch and Pittsburg police, the indictments are a relief, a vindication of their years of feeling patronized and ignored. In court Thursday, the officers appeared at the defendant’s table in handcuffs, with one of their lawyers complaining about the indignity of the pre-dawn raids that rousted his client — Antioch Officer Eric Rombough — from his home.
“This is what they get,” said Ursala Morgan, standing outside her Antioch home Thursday, just a block from where a gunman killed her fiancé, Victor Coleman II — another death that Rombough and other officers mocked in text messages. “They need to go to jail. Just like you picked up a lot of people and put a lot of innocent people in jail, and then you mocked them. Now it’s time for you to be on the other side.”
Over the last two decades, many people from the inner cities of Oakland and San Francisco moved to Antioch and Pittsburg, more affordable communities along the breezy Delta that they hoped would give their families a respite from crime, a respectable place to raise their children. The violent, racist text messages uncovered by investigators who seized officers phones as part of a broader probe suggest that they barely stood a chance. In the texts, many of which emerged in separate court proceedings earlier this year, officers called Black people “gorillas” and “monkeys” and used the n-word repeatedly, even boasting that they could use the term in front of supervisors with impunity.
In one batch of texts from 2021, Rombough sent photos of two young men, Trent Allen and Terryon Pugh, lying in hospital beds after he shot them with sponge bullets and arrested them in connection with what police say was a gang-related attempted murder. He seemed to revel in their misery: He kicked the head of Allen “like a f—— field goal,” Rombough texted, adding, “Gotta stop kicking n—–s in their head.”
In the photo, Allen appeared shirtless, with electrical nodes attached to his chest and a surgical mask on his face. He appeared to have a wound on his neck.
“You got him in the neck?!” a person texted Rombough.
“Yup and another fa—- in the butt,” Rombough replied, using a homophobic slur. “2 for the day.”
“Nice babe,” the person said.
In an interview Thursday, Allen’s mother, Shirelle Cobbs, said her “heart is overwhelmed” by the indictments.
“I’m just happy that chains are being broken, things are coming to pass,” Cobbs said. “I’m just happy that they’re taking action.”
John Burris, a longtime Bay Area civil rights attorney, filed a sprawling civil rights lawsuit against the city’s police department earlier this year. For victims of the corrupt officers, he said, “It’s important for them to know that what they were complaining about wasn’t a mistake or their imagination. It was reality.”
The indictments, he said, are “a good first step” toward cleaning up the police department and acknowledging that the indicted officers “have been on the wrong side of the law” for years.
Burris said the indictments once again highlight the need for strict federal oversight of the Antioch Police Department. He knows the impact such oversight can have in the Bay Area — his work two decades ago during the Oakland Police Department’s “Riders” scandal led to the installation of an independent monitor overseeing that agency as well.
On Thursday morning, while the officers were pleading guilty to numerous federal charges, LaTanya Marzett walked into the Antioch police department. She was reporting a theft at her storage unit. The lobby was quiet, and a note at the clerk’s desk said they would be back in 15 minutes.
She was thrilled to hear about the indictments.
After moving from San Francisco to Antioch in 2008, she and her family, she said, have suffered nothing but harassment from local police, including from several of the officers involved in the texting scandal.
“I know racism will never die,” she said. “But to hear what has been released is unbelievable.”
Did she think she would see a like Thursday?
“Never,’’ she said, “in a million years.”
Staff Writer Judith Prieve contributed to this report.
Source: www.mercurynews.com