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Maurice Flowers-Williams was in a situation many can relate to. He was the one Black person around his colleagues at work - and some of the things he heard were pretty upsetting, to say the least. He was a cop in Allentown, PA and things got so bad he decided to take action.
Maurice’s lawsuit states that he was repeatedly harassed and treated in a discriminatory way by his coworkers and his superiors. Despite having good reviews, he was passed over for promotions and had to deal with racist insults in the process! That’s not even the worst of it either.
The Morning Call reports that “a former police officer who was promoted to captain and retired in 2002 kept information about the Ku Klux Klan on his desk and distributed it to colleagues...The former captain also kept a Ku Klux Klan hood in his office and wore it.”
An officer even mocked Maurice, saying he was only hired because he was Black and when he was diagnosed with attention deficit disorder, the department fired him. His suit also says police were encouraged to racially profile Black people - just because.
Police have a racism problem across the country that isn’t simply limited to the streets. It’s going on in their departments too, between the officers who work together. Racism is deeply embedded in policing and being a Black cop isn’t an escape from that reality.