According to reports, a police officer in Anniston, Alabama, had been a founding member of a white supremacist group for years before he was placed on administrative leave Wednesday.
The Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC) recently published a video of the officer, Lieutenant Josh Doggrell presiding over a meeting of the League of the South (LOS), which believes the Southern states should secede and establish a Christian theocracy of “Anglo-Celtics.” In the video, he bragged to the group that his superior officers already knew about his involvement with the group and were supportive of his efforts.
“I’m not going to sell out my position with the League as something I believe in strongly,” Doggrell reportedly told his chief. “If it came down to it, I’d choose the League.”
“We pretty much think like you do,” Doggrell’s supervisor allegedly replied.
City council members, NAACP leaders, and civil rights activists met with police on Thursday to discuss the video as well as Doggrell’s suspension.
“Something has to be done. This isn’t the first incident, and it’s not the first incident with these officers. There’s a trail of evidence that leads so far back that this should not have happened,” city council member David Reddick said, noting that officials knew about Doggrell’s involvement for years and did nothing.
“I think it’s unfortunate that an outside organization,” Reddick said, “had to come and help us do something about what’s happening inside here. But this is one of the reasons we need to take basic diversity training, race relations training.”
