Racist police text messages: California mayor storms out of meeting, asks “you want to go outside?”

ANTIOCH — Emotions boiled over in a tense city council meeting Tuesday following the release of racist text messages allegedly sent by Antioch police, with the mayor at one point getting into a heated exchange with a resident who called for an investigation of him instead. Antioch Mayor Lamar Thorpe has called for an audit of police internal affairs and the firing of anyone involved in the sending of racist or homophobic texts, many of which were released in court on Tuesday. The texts, directed mainly at Black and Latinos, included names of 23 officers who now have been placed on administrative leave. Thorpe himself was the subject of one text exchange in which an officer offered to “buy a prime rib dinner” to anyone who shot the mayor during a Black Lives Matter protest in 2020 with a projectile used on protesters. Story: SUBSCR