He Oversaw Cesspool of Police Racism—and Paid No Price
Racist, homophobic, and sexually explicit texts describing routine brutality, faked confessions, and other civil right violations were sent between 2020 and 2021 by 17 of the 100 police officers in the Antioch, California, police department.
The text chains—recovered from officers’ phones during a joint investigation by the FBI and the Contra Costa County District Attorney— were viewed by nearly half of the department.
But nobody said anything.
And the police chief at the time, Tammany Brooks, did nothing.
If Brooks did not know what was going on in the small department where he spent two decades, he certainly should have as it continued to go on right under his nose.
He nonetheless went on to become deputy police chief in Boise, Idaho. And he retains that position despite two reports from the joint investigation that document the damning texts during his tenure in Antioch.
The reports were presented in March to defense attorneys whose clients had been arrested by some of the officers involved. The contents were quickly leaked and so widely disseminated that the DA posted redacted versions on its website. The texts and the accompanying allegations are also detailed in a civil suit filed last week against Brooks and seven past and present Antioch cops.
To read the court papers is to wonder how the hell Brooks is still in law enforcement, much less second in command of the police department in Idaho’s capital city.
Much has been made about the “blue wall of silence.” This was more a cloak of indifference.
The suit—filed by six private citizens who say they suffered “malicious treatment” at the hands of the Antioch police—charges that Brooks “was aware of the openly racist conduct” and “use of excessive force” by officers under his command when he served as chief of police from 2017 to 2021.
The complaint further alleges that Brooks “failed to take any remedial measures and tolerated, encouraged, and ratified the repeated and widespread pattern and practice of unconstitutional actions.”
Neither Brooks nor the police union representing the Antioch cops involved responded to a request for comment.
Whether or not Brooks knew specifically what was going on, the texts evidence a pathology that he either accepted or ignored . His officers routinely described Black people as “apes” and “monkeys.” One cop talked of pulling over motorists only “cuz they Black.” Another wrote of kicking a suspect’s head “like a fucking field goal.” Another, Officer Morteza Amiri of the K-9 unit, wrote, ”I sometimes just say people gave me a full confession when they didn’t.”
In addition to being a defendant in the present case, Amiri was named along with Brooks in an earlier federal civil complaint that was filed three years ago.
The April 2020 suit was brought by Vance Gattis of Antioch. He was catching a ride to a local convenience store on April 19, 2019, when the car he was in with two other adults and a child was pulled over by Amiri for having tinted windows.
Amiri ordered Gattis out of the car, ostensibly for not wearing a seatbelt as a passenger. The complaint says that Amiri then put Gattis in a chokehold and sicced his police dog, Purcy, on him.
“[Purcy] mauled Gatti’s arms, chest and neck areas,” the complaint says.
Three other cops allegedly joined in punching Gatti and beating him with flashlights. He was also Tasered.
“As a result of the incident, Mr. Gattis suffered physical injuries throughout his body, including an intracranial hemorrhage, spinal cord injury, and chest wall trauma,” the complaint says. “He required stitches for lacerations to the arms and forehead.”
With regards to Brooks and other Antioch officials, the complaint adds, “Plaintiff is informed and believes and thereon alleges that high-ranking CITY officials, including high-ranking supervisors… knew and/or reasonably should have known about the repeated acts of unconstitutional use of force by CITY officers.”
The complaint further alleges that Antioch “has a pattern of city officers using excessive force and making unlawful arrests on the African American community” and that “his pattern of misconduct by city officers should have been enough to alert high ranking officials of deficiencies in city policy or training.”
The complaint contends Brooks and other officials “approved, ratified, condoned, encouraged, sought to cover up, and/or tacitly authorized” the racist abuse.
All of that would have been just a computer search away had Boise Police Chief Ryan Lee done even cursory vetting of Brooks before hiring him in August 2021. A quick online search would have also produced a 2017 posting on the Antioch Police Department Facebook page showing Brooks standing next to Amiri.
“Please say hello to the newest member of the Antioch PD family, Officer Morteza Amiri. Pictured here with Chief Tammany Brooks, Morteza was sworn in today,” the post said. “Morteza is an Antioch homeowner, and is excited to be able to work with the community and his peers to combat crime in Antioch… Congratulations Morteza and welcome!”
The post reported that Amiri had previously served with the police department in nearby Brentwood.
“A fun fact about Officer Amiri is that because he has always admired the Antioch Police Department, he would sometimes switch his radio from the Brentwood radio channel and accidentally respond to the Antioch PD call,” the post added. “Guess it was meant to be!”
Such rule-breaking was apparently applauded with no thought of where it could lead.
“Congratulations Morteza and welcome!” the post said.
In total, the seven-member Antioch K-9 unit sicced their dogs on suspects 49 times between 2019 and and early 2022. Amiri and Purcy accounted for 22 of them, including a traffic stop in which the cop ordered the dog to jump into the driver’s side window. Amiri is now one of eight Antioch cops who were suspended this month after it became known that they are targets of a federal grand jury probe arising from the original joint investigation.
Any indictments will further raise the question of how Brooks could not have been aware there was a serious problem in the Antioch Police Department.
His new department in Idaho has been having some problems of its own. Lee, the Boise police chief who hired Brooks, was fired last September as a result of numerous complaints from his subordinates. The most notable was from Sgt. Kirk Rush, who reported to the Idaho State Police that he suffered a broken neck when Lee suddenly chose him to demonstrate an unauthorized restraining hold.
On top of that, word that a retired police supervisor had posted white supremacist sentiments online prompted Boise Mayor Lauren McLean to order an investigation of the entire department to see if it was “infected” with racism. The allocated funds appear to have run out before the law firm hired to conduct the probe reached any firm conclusions.
Brooks has a biography that would seem to make him a natural to become the new chief: a one-time high school dropout who started life as the mixed-race son of a thrice-convicted felon in a high-crime district of San Francisco, he worked his way up through the police department ranks, earning an undergraduate degree and a masters along the way.
If that narrative helped him go from being the first Black police chief in Antioch to the first Black deputy chief in Boise, it was unlikely to get him past the federal lawsuit and the accompanying investigation down in California.
A spokesman for the Contra Costa DA told The Daily Beast that the probe began in September 2021 with an anonymous tip from a member of the public “asking us to investigate possible offenses at [the] Pittsburg Police Department.”
According to one news report, the tip concerned officers paying a woman to do their course work towards a college degree, which translates into a salary hike at both departments. The resulting investigation quickly extended to neighboring Antioch.
In November 2021 the FBI joined the DA in investigating what the spokesman described to the Beast as “a broad range” of “crimes of moral turpitude” at the Pittsburg and Antioch police departments. Search warrants for the officers’ cell phones apparently led to the texts.
One immediate result is that in recent weeks prosecutors have dropped cases involving the officers under suspicion. That included at least four instances in which the defendant had been convicted on a gun charge.
On Thursday in Boise, the mayor appointed interim Police Chief Ron Winegar to become the new top cop, pending confirmation by the city council next week. Brooks remains the No. 2.
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