A five-page handwritten statement from a patron at Classics Pub on Route 12, submitted as evidence, said Officer Perrault repeatedly used the “n word” to describe African-Americans while watching a televised NBA game.
Also, Chief Healey said his officers told him of an incident on St. Patrick’s Day at a bar in Faneuil Hall in Boston. Officer Perrault, after seeing a black man wearing a Guinness beer T-shirt, allegedly said to the man “I didn’t know they served Guinness in Africa.” The chief said the remark provoked a scuffle with the man, which was broken up by fellow Leominster officers, including Officer Perrault’s superiors, who were with him.
The Chief of Police wants him fired. The Mayor is going to decide it later this week. And none of this ever would have come to light, I reckon, if this dude hadn’t decided to yell garbage at a ballplayer who doesn’t care a lick about him or what he thinks.
Still, there is a lot of nonsense afoot here from the folks looking to oust the police officer. If you’ll recall, there was a lot of argument in this case about the term “Monday” -- the slur the officer used -- and its definition, which the Chief took from the Urban Dictionary. I have little doubt that this cop was actually hurling a slur at Crawford, but I’d like to think our civil servants aren’t making hiring and firing determinations based on what appears to be way too great a reliance on one of the biggest disaster area websites on the Internet.
This is somewhat more concerning: After the officer’s lawyer argued about the potential uncertainty regarding whether the word in question was a slur ...
Sorry, that can’t be the standard. We can infer intent by the speaker from a number of sources -- as the hearing here seems to have done -- but we can’t rely solely on how the target of an alleged slur took it. Remember the fun little debate about “niggardly?” Boy, that was an exercise in stupidity. Again, I don’t think it’s the case here, but if we’re going with what the target assumed, we’re going to run into situations in which someone’s ignorance determines whether someone else loses their job or gets kicked out of school or something.
Oh well. Enough of that today.
(thanks to Big Leagues, who is helping us see this story through to the end)