“It prompted me to assume how I actually wished to deal with folks in a different way,” he stated. “And it had an affect, that’s for positive.”Chie
“It prompted me to assume how I actually wished to deal with folks in a different way,” he stated. “And it had an affect, that’s for positive.”
Chief Magnus began his legislation enforcement profession in 1979 as a dispatcher within the Lansing Police Division, rose by the ranks and in 1999 turned the police chief in Fargo, N.D., the place he helped set up a liaison program for refugees.
Later, because the police chief in Richmond, he helped drive down violent crime. In 2014, one in all his final years with the division, the town recorded simply 11 homicides, the bottom quantity in additional than 4 many years. That 12 months, Chief Magnus was photographed holding the Black Lives Matter signal and, when criticized by the native police union, stated he would do it once more.
However in Richmond, Chief Magnus additionally confronted a racial discrimination lawsuit filed by seven Black sergeants, lieutenants and captains, though in 2012 a jury rejected all of the claims. In 2015, a former Richmond police officer settled a wrongful termination lawsuit with the division after he stated he was fired for complaining that Chief Magnus sexually harassed him and made racial slurs. Chief Magnus referred to as the accusations “fully bogus.”
“There have been nonetheless folks at the moment who felt I’m a neater goal as a result of I’m a homosexual man,” he stated. “That’s not the primary time in my profession I’ve skilled that.”
In Tucson final 12 months, Chief Magnus once more drew hearth when the division took two months to launch the body-camera video of the loss of life of a 27-year-old Latino man, Carlos Ingram Lopez, who pleaded repeatedly for water as he was being restrained by cops.
Chief Magnus attributed the delay to a bureaucratic breakdown, saying he didn’t instantly watch the video. However he stated he wished he had accomplished extra to see it himself. “We should always have requested to see the video however that didn’t occur, and once we did in the end see it clearly we had been very involved about it,” he stated. Chief Magnus provided his resignation throughout a information convention because the video was made public, however the mayor stored him on the power and praised his work in an announcement on Monday.