The recently fired Oakland police officer accused of posting racist messages to Facebook a dozen years ago appeared to often target Black people and Guatemalans in statements peppered with slurs and expletives, according to a media report.
The officer repeatedly used the N-word and described a “hate” for Black people, according to posts that were captured by Univision. The officer — who has yet to be named by the Oakland Police Department — has been identified by sources as Jocelyn Chang Newman. She graduated in February 2023 from the police department’s 190th Basic Recruit Academy and had been working on patrol, sources said, though it’s unclear where in the city she worked.
Prior to joining OPD, she had a license to work as a security guard in San Francisco, state records show.
The messages obtained by Univision spanned from at least summer 2012 to spring 2013, and included multiple references to Black people as “ignorant.” She also appeared to repeatedly target people from Guatemala, describing “anything tainted” by people from that country as “nasty.”
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“Exactly why I f—ing hate black ppl always have to take from hard working ppl/families that’s why karma lands them in a grave,” read one of the messages posted to Facebook in August 2012.
The Oakland Police Department said on Wednesday it had launched an internal affairs investigation on Feb. 2, immediately after a media outlet brought the alleged statements to its attention. The department said it was working with the Alameda County District Attorney’s Office to investigate “any and all cases” that may be impacted by the officer’s alleged conduct.
“We’re going to do every single thing we can to get to the bottom of this,” Interim Assistant Chief Trevelyon Jones said in a recorded statement. “We have to have people here at the Oakland Police Department that love Oakland and care about the community. We cannot have people here who hold racist, hateful views serving our community.”
The discovery of the officer’s alleged postings added to a long list of racist messaging scandals to hit the Bay Area in recent years, including within the Oakland Police Department’s own ranks.
At least seven Oakland police officers were disciplined in 2021 after the discovery of an Instagram account created by a fired Oakland officer that included memes that were sexist, racist and mocked efforts to curb police brutality. The account drew a following among , numerous active Oakland police officers, yet Oakland police leaders waited months after its discovery in September 2020 to launch an investigation, thinking the account could be an “Antifa or BLM-type trap” or an effort by activists to “infiltrate” their department.
Outside investigators later criticized the department for its sluggish response, and the scandal later became another key reason in 2022 that the department failed to shed its decades-long federal oversight.
Elsewhere in the East Bay, dozens of Antioch police officers were found to have sent or received deeply racist and homophobic texts that included references to Black people as “gorillas,” “monkeys” and “water buffalo” and boasts of violating residents’ civil rights. The scandal was among the biggest to rock the Bay Area in recent years, with the texts having been discovered during an FBI investigation into widespread police misconduct across Contra Costa County. In August, federal and state prosecutors filed charges against 14 former Antioch and Pittsburg cops in a range of alleged crimes, including fraud, civil rights violations and accepting bribes.
And in the South Bay, a San Jose officer resigned after the discovery of racist text messages he wrote in recent years, including usage of the N-word and the proclamation “I hate Black people.” In January, city officials were ordered to disclose more damning text messages and the previously unreleased names of two officers connected to the scandal.
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