Kentucky assistant police chief told recruit to ‘shoot’ black teens and rape their mothers
The former assistant police chief of Prospect, Kentucky instructed a Louisville Police recruit to “shoot” juveniles caught smoking marijuana if they are black.
Todd Shaw‘s shocking remarks were found in documents secured through an open records request and released Friday.
Shaw resigned from the suburban Louisville department last year and was found to have sent multiple “highly disturbing racist and threatening Facebook messages” to the recruit, according to Jefferson County Attorney Mike O’Connell.
O’Connell wrote a letter concerning the situation to Prospect Mayor John Evans on Aug. 31.
Shaw tried to keep the threatening messages private when media asked to see them under Kentucky’s open records law. Jefferson Circuit Court Judge Judith McDonald-Burkman ordered the records released despite Shaw’s requests to the contrary.
Mayor Evans said that while “the human reaction would be to fire” Shaw immediately, the Louisville police department needed to investigate the matter.
When Prospect Police Chief Jeff Sherrard “began his examination of the messages … it soon became apparent to him” that Shaw violated police standards and he was suspended which gave the police department “additional time to review the matter.”
Shaw resigned on November 20 when Sherrard presented his findings to him.
Evans said the messages were not sent on city computers or over city telephones and the messages were found to be “abhorrent, disgusting, and reprehensible.”
“The City of Prospect has zero tolerance for the type of content sent by Shaw,” Evans wrote in a press release. “… I want to make it crystal clear: neither the City of Prospect, not its citizens, condone, support or endorses the views expressed by Shaw in these postings/messages.”
Shaw was with the LMPD for over 20 years before he joined the Prospect department in 2012. In one of the Facebook exchanges, the Louisville police recruit asks Shaw what to do if he caught three juveniles smoking marijuana. The question was asked because the recruit was writing a paper about “the right thing to do.”
“F— the right thing,” Shaw allegedly answered. “If black shoot them.”
When the recruit asked what he would then tell the parents, Shaw responded, “… call their (pa)rents … if mom is hot then f— her … if dad is hot then handcuff him and make him suck my d—,” O’Connell’s letter to the Mayor said.
Shaw added, “Unless daddy is black. … Then shoot him.”
According to sources, the letters were found while Shaw was under investigation for allegedly interfering in a sexual abuse probe of the Metro Police’s Explorer program.
“There is no place in police departments for men or women who hold such strongly held prejudices, including recommending shooting people simply because of their race,” O’Connell said.
The LMPD recruit has not been named but he sent racist responses to Shaw during the exchanges, according to O’Connell’s letter. He too has resigned.
