2 California cops charged with spray-painting swastika, happy face on towed vehicle
(The AEGIS Alliance) – A couple of former police officers are facing charges of vandalism over one year after authorities discovered a swastika spray-painted on an automobile at a tow yard in California, according to authorities on Thursday.
29-year-old Christopher Tomsic and 28-year-old Cody Weldin have been implicated in painting the Nazi sign on a back seat in addition to a happy face on the frontal passenger seat in the course of an investigation in Torrance that began in January 2020, a Los Angeles county region city.
The two belonged to a team of cops that had responded to a call concerning 3 male suspects purportedly stealing mail coming from an apartment complex, the Los Angeles County District Attorney’s Office said. The cops had been led to an automobile that may have been made use of in the criminal activity and ordered it to be towed away.
The car owner found out about the spray-painting when he went to retrieve the vehicle as well as notified authorities.
“This type of conduct cannot be tolerated anywhere in our society,” Los Angeles County District Attorney George Gascon pointed out in a press release.
The pair of officers got fired not long after the incident occurred, however, the criminal probing moved little by little for over one year as the investigation uncovered additional troubling happenings entailing 13 more cops, each of whom faced suspensions. Authorities didn’t reveal any sort of details concerning those accusations, however, they stated that the group exchanged racist, homophobic, and also anti-Semitic information.
Police Chief Jeremiah Hart pledged to “aggressively pursue” any kind of hate, racial discrimination, or misbehavior within his department.
“It’s unacceptable, but it becomes doubly unacceptable when we have the people that are sworn to protect all of us who engage in this behavior,” Hart said to the media.
In a Thursday statement, Torrance City Manager Aram Chaparyan stated the case “in no way reflects the majority of the men and women of the Torrance Police Department.”
On Thursday, Christopher Tomsic and Cody Weldin each faced charges of vandalism and conspiracy to commit vandalism. Both of them gave not guilty pleas and are scheduled to come back to the courtroom on October 4 for a preliminary hearing.
Jeffrey Childers – The AEGIS Alliance – This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.
