Cop Rants About Killing Black Man, Covering It Up

Alabama city pays $35K to avoid suit after recording comes to light
By John Johnson,  Newser Staff
Posted Aug 4, 2015 3:25 PM CDT
Cop Rants About Killing Black Man, Covering It Up
   (Shutterstock)

The Guardian has a report out of Alabama about a white police officer caught on tape talking about how a black man he'd arrested should be murdered. "That mother------ right there needs a god---- bullet,” Alexander City cop Troy Middlebrooks says on the recording. At another point, he refers to Vincent Bias as "that n-----." Middlebrooks was speaking with Bias' white brother-in-law, who began recording after he says Middlebrooks spoke of police plans to kill Bias at a traffic stop. After the officer suggests to the brother-in-law that Bias had been threatening his own family, he offers advice on how to handle things: He'd “kill that mother------ with whatever I had in that f------ house," and then make it look like self-defense.

"Before the police got here, I’d f------ put marks all over my s--- and make it look like he was trying to f------ kill me," he says. "I’m a lot different from a lot of these other folks," Middlebrooks adds, because he says he's willing to speak his mind. When the recording came to light, the city paid Bias $35,000 to avoid a lawsuit, reports the Guardian, which has a link to the audio from May 2013. Middlebrooks is still on the job, and his chief defends him: “He was just talking," says Willie Robinson. "He didn’t really mean that." The NAACP says the matter should be investigated by the state as a potential criminal offense. Click for the full story. (Read more police officer stories.)

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