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Early Thursday (May 9) video surfaced of a white police woman of Montgomery County, Maryland, using a racial slur while addressing a group of Black workers outside a McDonald’s.
Barry Tucker, one of the individuals seen in the video, told Fox 5 News that he and his two brothers, along with a fellow co-worker, were casually hanging nearby at a McDonald’s on New Hampshire Avenue in White Oak.
According to Tucker, he and the three other men often have breakfast at the fast food chain, and then wait to be picked up for landscaping work in an area nearby the McDonalds and an adjacent gas station. Apparently the lot surrounding the restaurant is a convenient pickup spot for the truck’s driver to maneuver in and out of, and make large turns. Tucker and his friends all claim they’ve been getting picked up that location for months.
READ MORE: A sheriff and two officers accused of jailing innocent man in act of revenge
However, on that particular morning, the group of 20-something year old males were approached by officers, who cited that a call to the station was placed by a McDonald’s employee, who suspected the men of “loitering.” In footage provided by one of Tucker’s associates, a white, female officer can be heard casually calling the workmen the N-word, after one of them expresses their frustration over the hassle.
“Hey, you want to get out of here fast, right? So we have more people ya’ll (N-word) been trying to do something,” the officer is heard saying. When one of the men responds that the policewoman wouldn’t call him the derogatory term if she didn’t “have on her badge,” the officer swiftly replies, “‘I would still say it because what I’m doing is repeating your words.”
In an interview with WRC-TV, Tucker expressed his shock over hearing the officer mutter the slur.
“I couldn’t believe it. I could not believe it and I couldn’t believe her face that she made. She thought it was actually a cool thing to say and it’s not. She even said it was appropriate,” he told the news outlet.
Later that day, the Montgomery County Police Department not only addressed the matter in an official statement posted on their website, but they released footage from the officer’s body camera, as well.
Part of the statement reads:
“The Montgomery County Department of Police takes all allegations of racial discrimination seriously. We are committed to serving all members of the community in a fair, impartial, and non-discriminatory manner at all times…
We sincerely regret the disturbing nature of this video. We understand the pain such language causes the entire community. Our commitment to having open and honest communication with the community and providing transparent police service persists. As part of our commitment to accountability and transparency, we are releasing both the social media video and the body worn camera footage of the involved officer for all to view…”
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