Veteran police detective Frank Lyga fired over racially-charged recordings

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Los Angeles Police Chief Charlie Beck has fired Det. Frank Lyga because of racially charged comments Lyga made last year, according to the Los Angeles Times.

Earlier this year, an audio recording surfaced of Lyga describing an incident in 1997 when he shot and killed a fellow LAPD officer during a dispute. Lyga, who was working undercover at the time, got into an argument with Kevin Gaines. Gaines, who is black, was off-duty at the time.

It was determined Lyga was acting in self-defense. At a LAPD training session last November, Lyga recalled a conversation with Gaines’ attorney at the time. The attorney asked Lyga if he had any regrets and Lyga told session attendees:

No, I regret he was alone in the truck at the time. I could have killed a whole truckload of them, and I would have been happy doing it.

At the session, he also referred to Gaines’ attorney Carl Douglas as an “Ewok.”

A three-person department board of rights panel said those comments “cause irreparable damage to the department’s image and gave fodder to our detractors who believe that the LAPD harbors racist officers.”

The panel continued:

You stated in your testimony that you have been fighting the negative image of being a racist cop killer, but then you, intentionally or not, confirmed this image during this speech.

Beck’s decision to fire Lyga over his comments comes on the heels of a decision earlier this year not to fire Officer Shaun Hillmann over racist comments in which he referred to an African-American man as a “monkey.”