Police Chief Says It’s Perfectly Fine An Officer Was Part Of A Hate Group Because The Cop Already Retired From Racism

Michael Harriot

What would hap­pen if a police chief found out one of his offi­cers was a part of a white nation­al­ist orga­ni­za­tion known for vio­lent attacks? What if a jury had already deter­mined that the offi­cer was guilty of vio­lat­ing a citizen’s con­sti­tu­tion­al rights in a vio­lent attack? What if some­one could prove this cop had actu­al­ly paid dues to the vio­lent, white suprema­cist orga­ni­za­tion? Could you imag­ine what would hap­pen? Well, if this hap­pened in the lily-white vil­lage of East Hampton, Conn., the answer is:

Nothing at all.

The FBI clas­si­fies the Proud Boys as an “extrem­ist group with ties to white nation­al­ism.” The Southern Poverty Law Center has des­ig­nat­ed them a “hate group.” The New York Times and Wall-Street Journal calls them “far-right.” They were kicked off of most social media plat­forms for espous­ing white nation­al­ist ide­ol­o­gy. 

Proud Boys were con­vict­ed of gang vio­lence in New York and par­tic­i­pat­ed in the White Lives Matter ral­ly in Tennessee. Former Proud Boys mem­ber Jason Kessler orga­nized the “Unite the Right” march in Charlottesville, Va., and if you were so inclined, you could have met mem­bers of the “alt-right” fra­ter­nal orga­ni­za­tion protest­ing with neo-Nazis and attack­ing anti-racists in Berkeley, Calif.

Or, if you just hap­pen to be cruis­ing through Connecticut, you can just stop in East Hampton and ask to meet offi­cer Kevin P. Wilcox.

In June, Kristen Clarke, pres­i­dent of the Lawyers Committee for Civil Rights Under Law, sent a let­ter to East Hampton Police Chief Dennis Woessner noti­fy­ing the depart­ment that Wilcox, a 10-year-vet­er­an of the force, was a known white suprema­cist. The June 24 let­ter also not­ed that a fed­er­al grand jury had deter­mined that Wilcox vio­lat­ed the con­sti­tu­tion­al rights of Alan P. Clark dur­ing a 2008 inci­dent that some­how result­ed in Clark get­ting beat in the head with Wilcox’s flash­light. The city even­tu­al­ly reached a con­fi­den­tial set­tle­ment in that case and Wilcox con­tin­ued his employ­ment as an officer.

“Officer Wilcox’s asso­ci­a­tion with white suprema­cists on pub­lic plat­forms, as well as his his­to­ry of vio­lence, risks inter­fer­ing with your department’s oper­a­tions by dis­rupt­ing the work­ing rela­tion­ships between the East Hampton Police Department and the com­mu­ni­ty it serves,” wrote Clarke in her let­ter to Chief Woessner.

In response, the chief’s posi­tion was basi­cal­ly: “Yeah, but why y’all always bring­ing up old shit?” explain­ing that Wilcox has retired from racism.

The Hartford Courant reports:

The East Hampton offi­cer, Kevin P. Wilcox, “stopped his asso­ci­a­tion” with the Proud Boys in February, about five months before the Lawyers’ Committee for Civil Rights Under Law inquired about his social media con­nec­tions with oth­er group mem­bers, Police Chief Dennis Woessner said.

In a let­ter to the Washington-based civ­il rights group, the police chief acknowl­edged that Wilcox had been a Proud Boys mem­ber and made online pay­ments to a group leader. The rights group described those pub­licly vis­i­ble, online trans­ac­tions as month­ly dues that helped fund the Proud Boys’ “vio­lent or oth­er­wise ille­gal” activities.

But the chief said he reviewed the mat­ter, received an “explana­to­ry report” from Wilcox and closed the department’s inquiry as being “unfound­ed,” with no evi­dence to sup­port a pol­i­cy vio­la­tion. Wilcox “adamant­ly denies being asso­ci­at­ed with white suprema­cists’ groups,” the chief wrote in a let­ter dat­ed Sept. 13.

Woessner claims “there’s no ques­tion” that Wilcox is not a white suprema­cist for a num­ber of reasons:

First of all, Woessner said he inves­ti­gat­ed the Proud Boys’ his­to­ry of vio­lence and hate by using a ground­break­ing inves­tiga­tive tech­nique: He Googled them. That’s not a joke. When reporters asked the god­damn police chief what he knew about the orga­ni­za­tion that has ter­ror­ized peo­ple across the coun­try for years, the chief responded:

“Only what I searched on the Internet.”

Ok, to be fair, maybe Chief Woessner used Bing. Proud Boys say they aren’t racists, they are “anti-polit­i­cal cor­rect­ness” and “anti-white apol­o­gists.” The chief also claims he looked at all of the stops Wilcox made since 2018 and not­ed that Wilcox has only stopped white people.

Oh.

Maybe I was wrong. Maybe Wilcox isn’t racist and this is proof. I would expect that a racist police offi­cer would prob­a­bly tar­get black peo­ple all the time, so I agree with Chief Whitesplainer that Wilcox might not be a white suprema­cist. Of course, the fact that East Hampton is 88 per­cent white and only 1 per­cent black prob­a­bly has noth­ing to do with that.

The Lawyers Committee is demand­ing that the city con­duct a thor­ough review of Wilcox’s traf­fic stops and any com­plaints that may have arisen before the offi­cer turned in his let­ter of res­ig­na­tion to the Proud Boys. The group also wants Wilcox fired and a Department of Justice inves­ti­ga­tion into whether anyone’s civ­il rights have been violated.

“The infil­tra­tion of white suprema­cists into police depart­ments is a nation­al cri­sis,” Clarke said in a state­ment. “As com­mu­ni­ties con­tend with ris­ing hate crimes, it is crit­i­cal that African Americans and peo­ple of col­or have faith in local law enforce­ment. Police offi­cers who affil­i­ate with white suprema­cist groups con­tribute to a cli­mate of fear and mis­trust, infect the ranks with bias and racism, and exac­er­bate the divides between com­mu­ni­ties of col­or and the police.”

Although Chief Woessner’s log­ic makes no sense, I would like to declare to the East Hampton Police Department and racist cops every­where that I have for­mal­ly resigned from being stopped, frisked, arrest­ed and shot by white suprema­cists with badges.

Damn. I wish I had known it was that easy