Cincinnati Police Officer And Ex-reality Show Figure Fired After Using Racial Slur On Camera

“This type of hate­ful speech will not be tol­er­at­ed by any­one who works for the Cincinnati Police Department, sworn or civil­ian,” the inter­im police chief said.
By Tim Stelloh

A Cincinnati police offi­cer who appeared on a real­i­ty show about women in law enforce­ment was fired after she was record­ed on her own body cam­era using a racial slur, offi­cials said.

The city man­ag­er approved a rec­om­men­da­tion from the inter­im police chief that Rose Valentino be fired over the April 5 inci­dent, the city said in a state­ment Monday.

“This type of hate­ful speech will not be tol­er­at­ed by any­one who works for the Cincinnati Police Department, sworn or civil­ian,” inter­im Police Chief Teresa Theetge said in a statement.

Valentino, a 14-year vet­er­an of the force who reg­u­lar­ly appeared in the 2011 TLC series “Police Women of Cincinnati,” was removed from patrol duty last month after an inter­nal affairs probe found that she used the slur while she was upset over traffic.

According to an inter­nal affairs report, Valentino was angry that cars in line to pick up high school stu­dents didn’t move when she acti­vat­ed her lights. Valentino was espe­cial­ly upset about a Black stu­dent who raised his mid­dle fin­ger at her, accord­ing to the report.

She was record­ed on body cam­era say­ing “F — — [racial slur], I f — — hate them!” while punch­ing the steer­ing wheel of her squad car, accord­ing to the report.

Valentino told inves­ti­ga­tors that she does­n’t have racial bias­es or use racial slurs — but she acknowl­edged using the slur, say­ing it “was not intend­ed to refer to all African Americans but was specif­i­cal­ly and nar­row­ly in ref­er­ence to the teenag­er,” accord­ing to an inter­nal memo writ­ten by a police cap­tain that was released Monday.

She told the inves­ti­ga­tors that she had been “desen­si­tized to racial­ly offen­sive lan­guage by music and hear­ing peo­ple talk on the street, and fre­quent expo­sure allowed the slur to slip into her ver­nac­u­lar,” accord­ing to the memo.

The memo added that Valentino sought men­tal health treat­ment after the incident.

The cap­tain rec­om­mend­ed that Valentino remain on the force with a 56-hour sus­pen­sion and manda­to­ry training.

But Theetge reject­ed that rec­om­men­da­tion, say­ing in a sep­a­rate memo that Valentino had been trained in recent years on nondis­crim­i­na­tion, implic­it bias and fair and impar­tial policing.

“This leads me to believe that addi­tion­al train­ing will not change Officer Valentino’s behav­ior,” she said, adding that Valentino “demon­strat­ed an inabil­i­ty to main­tain her com­po­sure in the most offen­sive manner.”

Valentino could­n’t be reached for com­ment. In a state­ment to NBC affil­i­ate WLWT of Cincinnati, Dan Hils, the pres­i­dent of the local police union, said no police offi­cer should use any racial slur, “and any­one who does is wrong.”

“Officer Valentino is enti­tled to chal­lenge her ter­mi­na­tion if she choos­es and the FOP will rep­re­sent her if she does,” Hils added.