“It prompted me to assume how I actually needed to deal with folks in a different way,” he stated. “And it had an affect, that’s for certain.”Chief
“It prompted me to assume how I actually needed to deal with folks in a different way,” he stated. “And it had an affect, that’s for certain.”
Chief Magnus began his legislation enforcement profession in 1979 as a dispatcher within the Lansing Police Division, rose via the ranks and in 1999 grew to become 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 yr, 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 known as the accusations “completely 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 yr, Chief Magnus once more drew fireplace when the division took two months to launch the body-camera video of the demise of a 27-year-old Latino man, Carlos Ingram Lopez, who pleaded repeatedly for water as he was being restrained by law enforcement officials.
Chief Magnus attributed the delay to a bureaucratic breakdown, saying he didn’t instantly watch the video. However he stated he wished he had carried out extra to see it himself. “We should always have requested to see the video however that didn’t occur, and after we did in the end see it clearly we have been very involved about it,” he stated. Chief Magnus supplied 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 a press release on Monday.