FILE - Community members listen to speakers during a rally at Antioch police headquarters in Antioch, Calif., on April 18, 2023. Racist police text messages containing slurs and images of gorillas will take center stage in a San Francisco Bay Area courtroom on Friday, July 21, 2023, as a judge weighs whether the messages violated a state law designed to stamp out racism in the criminal court system. MARTINEZ, Calif.
But the judge spent much of Friday’s hearing ruling on motions and not on evidence, and none of the officers testified. The hearing will continue in late August, and the underlying criminal case is on hold. Antioch Police Chief Steven Ford was also subpoenaed to testify, but Goldstein ruled Friday he did not need to appear because his testimony was not relevant to whether officers showed racial bias or animus. Ford was not the police chief at the time the text messages were sent.
Mathew Martinez, a lawyer for one of the defendants, said the officers were subpoenaed so they could explain in court why they sent the texts. But “they’re all unavailable, indefinitely,” he said. Two of the defendants, Trent Allen and Terryon Pugh, were the subjects of some of the released text messages. Officers joked about kicking their heads and shooting them in the neck and buttocks. They also shared photos of Allen and Pugh injured in their hospital beds.
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