Boston cop Justin Barrett suspended for calling Henry Louis Gates a 'jungle monkey'
BY Corky Siemaszko
DAILY NEWS STAFF WRITER
Thursday, July 30th 2009, 10:47 AM
Brett/AP
Boston police officer Justin Barrett was suspended Wednesday, July 29, 2009, for using a racial slur to describe black Harvard professor Henry Louis Gates Jr.
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A Boston cop insisted he was not a racist as he apologized for calling Harvard professor Henry Louis Gates a "banana-eating jungle monkey" in a mass e-mail.
"I did not mean to offend anyone," Officer Justin Barrett told WCVB-TV. "The words were being used to characterize behavior, not describe anyone."
Barrett admitted it was a "poor choice of words."
"I didn't mean it in a racist way," he added. "I treat everyone with dignity and respect."
Boston Mayor Tom Menino said he doesn't buy Barrett's explanation and wants the officer, who has already been suspended, fired.
"He's gone," Menino said. "G-o-n-e. I don't care, it's like cancer. You don't keep those cancers around."
Barrett, 36, who is also a captain in the National Guard, said he will fight to keep his job. He said he was "just venting" about the July 16 arrest of Gates by a white Cambridge cop that became a national discussion about race when President Obama said the officers acted "stupidly."
"People are making it about race," Barrett said. "It is not about race."
But it may be about whether Barrett has any sense.
Barrett got into hot water after he fired off the note to his buddies in the Guard - and, inexplicably, The Boston Globe.
In the email, Barrett called the Globe story "jungle monkey gibberish" and wrote that Gates' "first priority should be to get off the phone and comply with police."
"For if I was the officer he verbally assaulted like a ... jungle monkey, I would have sprayed him in the face with OC deserving of his belligerent non-compliance," Barrett wrote.
OC is pepper spray.
Barrett went on to question Gates' credentials, called him a "God damned fool," and twice challenged the paper to "ax" him what he thinks.
"I am not a racist, but I am prejudice [sic] towards people who are stupid and pretend to stand up and preach for something they claim is freedom," Barrett wrote.
Read more: nydailynews.com
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