The emails, some of which contained off-color jokes about President Obama and African-American celebrities, were uncovered during an unrelated internal affairs investigation. At a news conference on Thursday, Chief Daniel Oates expressed outrage over the content, which included a photo of a woman with a black eye and the caption, "Domestic violence. Because sometimes, you have to tell her more than once,” and other images which were demeaning towards women and people of color.
— Joey Flechas (@joeflech) May 14, 2015
Another email included an image of a mock Monopoly board with the title “Black Monopoly,” where every square other than the jail square read “go to jail.”
— Lauren Pastrana CBS4 (@LaurenPastrana) May 14, 2015
Among the 16 officers involved are two high-ranking officials, Former Major Angel Vazquez and Former Captain Alex Carulo. Vazquez has since retired and Carulo was fired on Thursday following the discovery. Oates stated that they were the officers responsible for most of the pornography, of which he says there was a very high volume.
— Joey Flechas (@joeflech) May 14, 2015
Vazquez is potentially facing charges for emailing an autopsy photo of Raymond Herisse, a man who was killed by police in 2011. More officers may be criminally charged if any of the pornography is determined to contain images of minors.
"I can't tell you how angry we are," Oates told reporters. "We want to send a message to our officers and our employees that this kind of behavior is over."
The Miami-Dade State Attorney Katherine Fernandez Rundle also expressed her outrage.
"These activities are a breach of trust. They are disgusting," she told CBS.
Miami Beach isn’t the first department to have a scandal of this nature this year.
The San Francisco Police Department is currently reviewing approximately 3,000 cases for bias after racist, sexist, and homophobic text messages sent by 14 officers were uncovered.
These discoveries add more weight to the discussion that racism within police departments is a rampant issue.
Statistics show that a black male teenager aged 15-19 is 21 times more likely to be killed by police than a white male between the same ages.
Federal data from 2010-2012 shows that black teens were killed at a rate of 31.17 per million, while just 1.47 per million white male teens died at the hands of police, ProPublica reported.
