Ohio Police Chief Resigns After Putting KKK Sign On Black Officer’s Desk
(The AEGIS Alliance) – A police chief in Ohio resigned this past week after an incident occurred where he put a “Ku Klux Klan” recruitment flyer on a Black police officer’s work desk.
Anthony Campo resigned from his position as the Sheffield Lake Police Department chief on Tuesday following Mayor Dennis Bring placing him on administrative leave after finding out about what happened, Cleveland.com reported.
The incident leading up to Campo being placed on leave from the department after 33 years took place last Friday.
Security camera footage reveals Campo printing out a paper that read “Ku Klux Klan” on the department’s photocopier and also putting it on a yellow-colored raincoat folded up to resemble one of the racist group’s white hoods.
The police officer that Campo targeted hasn’t been identified, however, he disclosed the incident to the police officers union that got in touch with Mayor Bring on Tuesday, Cleveland 19 reported.
Since Mayor Bring hadn’t yet viewed the video recording when finding out about the grievance, he made a decision to place Campo on administrative leave until an internal investigation has been completed.
That is, up until the mayor talked to his now-former chief.
“The chief was standing in his office,” Mayor Bring stated. “He made a joke, ‘Am I gonna get fired over this?’ And I looked at the law director, and I handed him his paper, and he says, ‘After 30 years, this is what I get?’ I said, ‘You have 10 minutes to get out of your office.’”
A few minutes afterward, Campo stated he would like to retire effective immediately and the city allowed his resignation.
“My view of it is that it was an extremely poor decision of somebody who thought this was a complete joke and didn’t have the understanding of the magnitude of what he has done,” Bring stated. “I don’t care, and somebody’s made a comment in this day and age it doesn’t matter this day and age, or if it was 40 years ago, that is the most inappropriate thing you can do to an African American. I don’t care; that was just totally offensive.”
WEWS reportedly talked to Campo, who stated he implied no hostility to the police officer he targeted.
“It was just a joke that got out of hand,” Campo stated. “I hired that officer on the force, he’s excellent with children, and I helped to save his job after he was in danger of being let go by another department due to age restrictions.”
Mayor Bring said he was shocked by what had happened, enough that he personally gave an apology to the city staff and became emotional and tearful when he had a conversation with the targeted officer, who Bring stated expressed he wanted to continue working for the department, the Lorain County Morning Journal wrote.
“It took us 10 minutes to even talk to each other because we were both so emotional,” Mayor Bring informed WKYC TV. “I apologized. We talked about it and as we did, he told me more about it. I was flabbergasted. There’s no one word to explain how disgusting this is.”
Kyle James Lee – The AEGIS Alliance – This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.
