Several members of the Antioch Police Department in Northern California have been identified as subjects of a Contra Costa County District Attorney’s Office and FBI investigation into a string of racist text messages dating back to 2019. On Friday (April 14), NBC News reported that the heavily redacted report had been made available to the public.

Those named in the probe include Sergeant Josh Evans, Sergeant Rick Hoffman, Detective Robert Gerber, and Officers Jonathan Adams, Morteza Amiri, Scott Duggar, Aaron Hughes, Brayton Milner, Calvin Prieto, John Ramirez, Andrea Rodriguez, Eric Rombough, Kyle Smith, and Devon Wenger.

Instances where several derogatory messages and memes using the racial slur n—ger dated back to September 2019. In a text sent from Evans to Amiri, he wrote, “I’ll bury that n—ger in my fields.” In 2020, Sergeant Jimmy Wisecarver sent a message in the text thread that read, “But we kill more Mexicans than anything else. So Blacks can feel safe.” According to report notes, the aforementioned message was in relation to an incident in 2014 where a man was assaulted by Antioch police. Another disgraceful example of an officer crossing the line included a photo of a naked Black man, with his genitals exposed, sitting on the neck of George Floyd that was sent to another citizen.

One message took aim at Mayor Lamar Thorpe, who is Black. It read, “I’ll buy someone a prime rib if they take that [racist epithet] Mayor Thorpe out with a whatever type of weapon.” On Tuesday (April 11), Thorpe called for the officers to be fired, citing his outrage over the hateful rhetoric that was revealed in the 21-page report. “Get the hell out of here. These people can go … they can go fly a kite for all I care. Get out of my police department. We don’t need them here,” he said during a city council meeting.

Contra Costa County Public Defender Ellen McDonnell told CBS Bay Area that the texts were abhorrent and reprehensible. “They reveal an entrenched culture of hatred, racism, homophobia, misogyny, and violence throughout the Antioch Police Department,” said McDonnell in a statement to the news outlet. As a result of the findings, she has asked District Attorney Diana Becton to halt criminal filings and current prosecutions involving the police department and begin a comprehensive review of all pending cases and past convictions.