Just as the Denver Police Department is getting ready to rumble — rolling out its brand new pepperball launchers and other riot toyz, the newsweekly Westword has pulled a dusty video out of some basement vault showing a 1979 recruiting class being berated by a commanding officer as “niggers,” beaners,” “greasers” and “homos,” demanding Jewish recruits ID themselves and questions women on their promiscuity. The shocking video, nearly 20 minutes long, may be old, but it doesn’t exactly promote the Mile High City as forward thinking at a particularly crucial moment.
Just two days before the start of the Democratic National Convention, the video is also not likely to prompt grins at Gitmo on the Platte.
Westword reporter Jared Jacang Maher highlights many of the lowlights of the video, in which the commanding officer, Sgt. Arthur Hutchinson, lays out insults to a group of young police recruits who are standing in a circle.
“Is the real reason you came on here is because you just wanted to have access to 1,400 guys to fuck?” he says to one young female. “You wouldn’t? Why not? All the other police women do. That’s the only goddamn thing these women think about is fucking all the time.”??
He orders several African-American recruits to sing “Camptown Races” while doing a tap dance. “All you fucking niggers tap dance,” he says.
Hutchinson goes on to call another African-American “a chimpanzee,” “the missing link,” and orders a white recruit to “hold his leash.”
According to Westword, Hutchinson joined the DPD in 1964 and retired from in 1991 after directing the Gang Unit. He went on to be the chief of the Eagle Police Department for a year and, from 1996 to 2005, was the chief of the Blackhawk Police Department.
There’s more vile — probably much more than you really want to read and see — over at Westword.
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