Daily Archives: May 20, 2012

The Ku Klux Klan protested in Eden last week, and this week some of its members have been passing out fliers inviting people in Reidsville to a cross-burning.

The fliers were placed in and around Sherwood Drive, Linville Drive, Reids School Road and Poplar Street in the city.

Annie P. Pinnix and her husband were among the residents who received the flier.

“I’m a little bothered by it,” Pinnix said.

Pinnix said the flier was found in her and her neighbors’ driveways, rolled up like a newspaper and tied with a yellow rubber band. Reidsville Police Chief Edd Hunt confirmed other residents found the fliers in a similar fashion.

The flier reads, “Join us, the Loyal White Knights of the Ku Klux Klan for a rally and cross lighting, Saturday, May 26, Harmony, North Carolina. Free Admition (sic)-White People Only. No alcohol, drugs, fighting, glass bottles or weapons. Free on site camping-all major motels in area. Souvenirs. Vendors. Food and beverages for Sale. Cross lighting at dusk-a white unity event. Live country band. Security provided by LWK.”

The flier also provided contact information for those wanting to attend the event.

Pinnix’s husband found the flier in their driveway. She said he wasn’t bothered by it, but she said it really makes her wonder what’s going on in Reidsville and if any of her neighbors called the hotline to attend the event.

Pinnix has lived in her neighborhood for at least six years and said it’s the first time she has seen something like this.

Hunt said the police station has received a few phone calls informing them about the fliers, but heard no real concern from residents. The issue has been passed on for the detectives’ division of the police department to look into.

Hunt said he isn’t sure if there is a connection to the KKK protests in Eden on May 8 or if the group passing out fliers has any connection to Reidsville.

http://www2.godanriver.com/news/2012/may/19/kkk-invites-reidsville-residents-cross-burning-eve-ar-1927411/

J.T. Ready: The Link Between White Supremacy and Anti-Immigration Groups in Arizona

Jason Todd Ready was a neo-Nazi who didn’t try to hide the fact that he was ready and willing to use deadly force on the U.S.-Mexico border to stop the incursion of undocumented immigrants. That his life came to a violent end was no surprise to those who, over the years, had tried to raise awareness about the danger to society posed by Ready and his associates.

Posthumously, Ready is being investigated as the lead suspect in an alleged mass-murder suicide that took place on May 2, and that resulted in the death of Ready and four others including his girlfriend, Lisa Mederos, her daughter, her daughter’s boyfriend, and Mederos’ 18 month-old grandchild.

The crime has been deemed a domestic violence incident by the police, but it’s a case that opens the door for other questions about Ready’s involvement in domestic terrorist groups, and exposes clear ties between the anti-immigrant movement in Arizona and white supremacist groups that have found sanctuary in a state polarized by a divisive immigration debate.

Unanswered Questions

During their search of Ready’s house after the killings were reported, officers found six anti-tank grenades—U.S. military-issue, 40 millimeter projectiles that require a launcher to be used (no launcher was found at the home)—according the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (ATF). Authorities are still investigating where the grenades came from, why they were at Ready’s residence, and whether or not he planned to use them.

In the aftermath of the killings, the FBI revealed that Ready had been the subject of an investigation related to “domestic terrorism” over a nearly five year period, in connection to a militia group called the U.S. Border Guard, a group that Ready founded. Despite the amount of time spent on the case, the investigation yielded no criminal charges against Ready.

Ready was well known to be a former member of the National Socialist Movement (NSM), a neo-Nazi group. More recently, he’d come to be recognized as the leader of an armed militia known as the U.S. Border Guard, a group that patrolled the desert borderlands looking for migrants. On occasion, Ready would capture people crossing the border and turn them over to the U.S. Border Patrol.

In an article published in the local weekly Phoenix New Times, journalist Stephen Lemons revealed the FBI was warned over two years ago by an informant that Ready had intentions to conduct raids in Latino neighborhoods and kill people, and that he planned to do so while posing as an officer from the Department of Homeland Security (DHS).

Last year, while the FBI was trying and failing to find evidence to bring down Ready, they did arrest Jeffrey Harbin, a former NSM member who Ready admittedly recruited to the organization. Harbin was arrested after police found him with twelve grenade-like explosives, ball bearings and an improvised fusing system. At that time, a local TV reporter from Channel 15 asked Ready if he knew what Harbin planned to do with the bombs, and Ready replied: “Things are still under investigation. You would have to talk to the feds and see what their official statement is on that, but I will say that domestic terrorism is real.”

A few months before Harbin’s arrest, at a Tea Party event, Ready and members of NSM had distributed fliers calling for the use of landmines on the border to stop illegal immigration.

Ties to the Anti-Immigrant Movement

Even though politicians that once befriended him, like former Senator Pearce, came to frown upon him, Ready’s activities closely fed off of and thrived on the growing anti-immigrant sentiment in Arizona.

He wasn’t one to shy away from the camera, and he used the polarizing issue of immigration in Arizona to propel himself into the national spotlight.

In 2010, he launched his U.S. Border Guard by inviting the national media to cover one of his patrols in a deserted area on a quest to capture what he called “narco-terrorists.”

At the time, politicians like Arizona’s Republican Governor Jan Brewer were making claims that law-enforcement was finding beheaded bodies in the desert, and that violent crime was going up in connection to illegal immigration. Subsequent media reports refuted both claims.

As much as Ready was considered to be at the fringe of the anti-immigrant movement, some of his tactics were indirectly embraced when governor Brewer signed SB 1495 into law last year, a bill that authorizes the creation of a state-operated border militia.

Critics argue that any such militia – it hasn’t yet been assembled—would attract the likes of Ready.

In addition to Pearce, Ready was drawn to public officials like Arpaio, who has made it his personal crusade to go after undocumented immigrants.

In the spring of 2009, Ready counter-protested during a march of 3,000 people to Arpaio’s Durango jail complex. Ready was joined by a handful of neo-Nazis that stepped on the Mexican flag while giving the Nazi salute and yelling racial slurs.

Photos and videos circulating on white supremacist web pages show Sheriff Arpaio getting his picture taken with them. During that time, Ready compared Arpaio’s actions to those of Adolph Hitler, saying the latter was his “hero.”

Like Pearce, Arpaio disassociated himself from Ready and his cohort during a press conference, and later complained that he hadn’t been aware of their stance when he got his picture taken.

Galindo said groups like the Minutemen opened their doors back in 2004 to extreme vigilante groups. Ready and Forde were among those who took up with the Minutemen at that time.

Galindo contends that Sheriff Paul Babeu and the U.S. Border Patrol allowed Ready’s group to operate in Pinal as a “legalized vigilante group.” And, said Galindo, some of Ready’s associates continue to do so.

“We need to hold local law enforcement responsible and say take your focus off chasing immigrants and start focusing on the true menaces of society, which are these legalized vigilante groups,” said Galindo.

http://www.hispanicallyspeakingnews.com/notitas-de-noticias/details/j.t.-ready-the-link-between-white-supremacy-and-anti-immigration-groups-in-/15976/

CeCe McDonald touches hands with Leslie Feinberg, WW managing editor, author and LGBTQ leader, through the plexiglass barricade during a recent visit.

The second-degree murder trial of Chrishaun “CeCe” McDonald in Minneapolis started April 30 and ended May 2. McDonald’s situation highlights the anti-transgender bigotry and racism rampant in society, as well as the inability of the “justice” system to mete out justice for the oppressed.

McDonald, a young African-American trans woman, survived a racist, anti-trans attack in July 2011. As she and her friends, all of them youths, African-American and queer or allied, walked to a grocery store late one night, they were brutally set upon by a group of racist whites outside a bar. McDonald was hit in the face with a glass and her cheek severely punctured. She was jailed and was the only person charged after a melee that left one of her attackers, a racist complete with a swastika tattooed on his body, dead.

Originally charged with second-degree felony murder and facing a possible sentence of decades in prison, McDonald agreed to the prosecution’s offer of pleading guilty to a reduced charge of second-degree manslaughter, with a prison term of 41 months.

Katie Burgess, of the Trans Youth Support Network, stated in a press release: “The executed sentence will be reduced by one-third, for ‘good time’ and credit for the time McDonald has served pending this resolution.

“The plea agreement comes nearly a year after McDonald was arrested, interrogated, denied adequate medical care for a laceration she suffered during the attack and held in solitary confinement for a month for being a transgender person. During the pre-trial proceedings, supporters raised worldwide support for the charges against McDonald to be dropped. [In April], supporters delivered to Hennepin County Attorney Michael Freeman a petition for dropping the charges with over 15,000 signatures and dozens of letters of support for McDonald from organizations and prominent individuals from around the globe.” (supportcece.wordpress.com, May 2)

Criminalized for fighting back, surviving

Transgender people of color face violence, murder and injustice daily throughout the United States. For surviving her attack, McDonald is criminalized. Others are not so “lucky.”

On April 16, Paige Clay was found dead in Chicago’s West Garfield Park from a single gunshot to her forehead. Clay, 23, was a trans woman of color. No one has been arrested for her murder. Brandy Martell was shot and killed on April 29 in Oakland, Calif., as she sat in her car, talking with three trans friends. The killer fired even as she tried to drive away. Martell, 37, was a trans woman of color and a peer advocate for transgender people in need of psychological and medical assistance. No arrests have been made. (xojane.com, May 9)

The National Coalition of Anti-Violence Programs issued a report in 2011 on “hate” violence motivated by gender identity and expression, sexuality and HIV status. A whopping 70 percent of anti-lesbian/gay/bi/trans murders in 2010 were of people of color. Forty-four percent of these victims were transgender women. (colorlines.com, July 18)

McDonald, like other trans women, will most likely face threats of sexual and other violence when she is incarcerated in an all-male facility.

The struggle for justice for McDonald continues. Stated Burgess: “We know that this system is not designed to deliver justice to young trans women of color. We are going to continue to support CeCe as she goes through this process and continue to stand for justice for all trans people and people of color so that this is the last time a young trans woman of color has to go through this.”

Supporters in Minneapolis and surrounding areas are urged to attend her sentencing on June 4 at 1:30 p.m., in the courtroom of Hennepin County Judge Daniel Moreno. A petition urging Minnesota’s governor to pardon McDonald can be signed at change.org/petitions/gov-mark-dayton-pardon-cece-mcdonald. Visit supportcece.wordpress.com for more information on how to support justice for McDonald and other trans people and people of color.

http://www.workers.org/2012/us/cece_mcdonald_0524/

Forensic evidence can be manipulated to obtain a false conviction.

On April 17, the Washington Post reported what activists and the Black community learned decades ago: that the FBI will do whatever is necessary to convict political prisoners, including manipulating evidence. Prison rights activists and lawyers have long argued that this was the case, often, as the Post investigation demonstrates, while lacking the very evidence needed to vindicate their argument. The U.S. injustice system has often fabricated or spun evidence in such a way that the truth was never available to judges, juries or the people.

The Post investigation focused on high-profile cases, such as the Oklahoma City bombing, the O.J. Simpson trial and the trial of Omar Abdel Rahman, who was charged with organizing the first attack on the World Trade Center, in 1993. However, the broader implications are that the manufacturing and manipulation of evidence by the FBI and other law enforcement agencies have condemned thousands of innocent victims to rot in jail, or be put to death.

The scam first came to light in the Rahman trial in 1995, when the FBI’s forensic specialist testified in court that he was told by his superiors to bias his interpretation of evidence to support the prosecutor’s case. It was later learned that this specialist had been warning for years that FBI officials were pressuring forensic lab technicians to distort evidence. But because his testimony occurred in a very public case, it embarrassed the Justice Department under President Clinton and forced them to launch an investigation.

Shortly thereafter, a 517-page “scathing report” was issued that only broadly condemned these practices, and stopped short of calling them what they were—fabrications. Another nine-year investigation followed, which was “closely controlled” by the FBI and at its conclusion faded away, failing to draw any definitive conclusions or identify the victims of these fabrications.

The latest revelations expose the rot at the base of the so-called justice system, concealed by popular TV crime programs such as CSI, which portray crime labs as being staffed by highly skilled specialists who relentlessly pursue justice through forensic truth.

In reality, we now see that these lab workers are tools used by police agencies to justify pre-formed conclusions and attacks on the working class and oppressed, particularly if they happen to be political activists or convenient scapegoats. The Post investigation concluded with detailed evidence of its own about how this happens, suggesting that evidence, such as DNA, fingerprints, handwriting, polygraph (lie detector) tests, firearm, hair, fiber evidence, pattern impressions and bullet lead tests are all subject to manipulation and/or error in the testing process.

The injustice of the system is not new. It is a system designed to be manipulated by powerful capitalist interests to spread fear and confusion and draw attention away from their own crimes. The only way to transform it into a true justice system is to replace the capitalist order the current system is set up to protect and serve.

http://www.pslweb.org/liberationnews/news/us-injustice-system.html

If you’re in the market for a historical home, you may be in luck. For a little less than 180 grand there’s a big white historic home in Warrenton, Georgia that could be yours. According to the listing published in a May 2012 home guide, the house has four bed rooms, 2 baths, large middle hallways, a smoke house and slave quarters.

If you’re in the market for a historical home, you may be in luck. For a little less than 180 grand there’s a big white historic home in Warrenton, Georgia that could be yours. According to the listing published in a May 2012 home guide, the house has four bed rooms, 2 baths, large middle hallways, a smoke house and slave quarters.

We took the ad and asked a few people what they thought about the listing. Several people said they were offended, others wondered why anyone would publish something that could be considered raciest.

Betty James says, “Racism is dead in America, but still the best way to sell a home in the South is to say that it has slave quarters.”

Terry Rickerson, “They shouldn’t have the slave quarters statement in there, that’s way in the past.”

News Channel 6 went to Watson and Knox Real Estate to try and get their side of this story, but nobody there wanted to go on television and talk about it. However, a few employees did tell us that anytime they list a home for sale they are required to list any additional property that comes with that home.

They said for this historical home in Warrenton, which used to be a plantation, they included the fact that it had the original slave quarters. A few people that News Channel 6 talked with today say they don’t have a problem with that because they understand that this home is a piece of history.

Tom Taylor says, “I think that it should be historically very interesting.”

Tom Taylor says he doesn’t feel like the listing was meant to upset anyone. However, it did strike a nerve for Velma Morgan, who says her great grandparents were slaves.

Morgan says, “If I was able to buy it, I wouldn’t buy it.”

The representative we spoke with at the real estate company said they really didn’t mean for this ad to offend anyone, so they are just going to go ahead and take this ad down.

http://www2.wjbf.com/news/2012/may/18/4/warrenton-home-sale-features-slave-quarters-ar-3820097/

In the following book excerpt, Jan Wong describes the spiral of depression she entered in 2006, after publishing an article linking the Dawson College shooting to Québécois racism:

My article had appeared on Saturday, Sept. 16, 2006. By Monday, I’d received hundreds of hate emails. “Piece of shit,” “bitch,” “stupid cunt,” “retarded,” “pathetic,” “perverted,” “bigoted,” and so on. One called my children “half-breeds.” Several wrote: “Go back to China.” Another lobbed this: “Your parents were immigrants.”

A few were unwittingly prescient. “Consult a psychiatrist,” one advised.

In an interview with The New York Times Magazine, the film director and author Nora Ephron once said, “Any catastrophe is good material for a writer.” She’s right, especially in the case of journalists. When we are abused, we split into two. We feel as bad as anyone, but we also record the action and our own reaction.

Even as I felt the sting of the emails, it occurred to me that the onslaught might make for an ironic follow-up article: What I was observing was a racist backlash against a minority reporter from Quebec (me) for the crime of suggesting that racism by “pure laine” old-stock Quebec francophones serves to alienate minorities in Quebec. I began taking notes. I rated the emails and voice mails on a yellow legal pad. Ten percent were supportive, 15% were neutral and 75% were vitriolic.

That was Monday, two days after my article had appeared. I didn’t know it at the time, but my newspaper, The Globe & Mail, already had invited an editor at La Presse, a French-language newspaper in Quebec, to write a commentary about me. It ran on Tuesday, under the headline: “Pure laine is pure nonsense.” More emails poured into my inbox. After tabulating several hundred, I gave up and saved them to read later. After all, I had to concentrate on my next story. A couple of days earlier at the Toronto International Film Festival, the actor Sean Penn had lit up during a press conference in a no-smoking meeting room at the Sutton Place Hotel.

The paparazzi snapped incriminating photos. Shock and horror ensued. My boss, the deputy managing editor of features, assigned me to personally test the city’s anti-smoking bylaw.

“Make sure you smoke where there are police.”

A non-smoker, I duly bought a pack of cigarettes. With a photographer in tow, I hit 10 spots including, of course, the Sutton Place Hotel. One coffee-shop owner called the police. A restaurant manager yelled at me and kicked me out. Scandalized cops at the Ontario Court of Appeal ordered me to butt out. The hotel concierge ejected me and ostentatiously spritzed the lobby with air freshener.

That night, I went home reeking of tobacco smoke and drained from risking arrest 10 times in one day. I barely noticed that my newspaper had published a letter from the premier of Quebec calling my report “a disgrace.” An editorial on the same page, written by the editor-in-chief himself, suggested there had been “no evidence” for my pure laine analysis. In Ottawa, the parliament of Canada passed a unanimous motion demanding that I apologize “to the people of Quebec for the offensive remarks.”

I felt somewhat chagrined, but not terribly so. As Harold Evans, former editor of the Sunday Times and The Times of London, wrote, “Independent reporting has a history of provoking denunciation.” I figured that if I wasn’t provoking a debate, I wasn’t doing my job.

But that week the Globe kept publishing letters — 13 in all — under headings like “Dangerous clichés,” “Narrow-minded analysis” and “Absurd viewpoint.” In Quebec, the media began calling the event “l’affaire Wong.”

They noted that the Globe appeared to be backing away from its reporter and its story. The steady drumbeat of attention triggered more hate email. “Consider yourself lucky that no one has yet been alienated enough to go postal on you.”

In a way, the onslaught I experienced was reminiscent of China’s Cultural Revolution, whereby victims would stand, heads bowed, while others spewed invective, hate and spittle. But then, I thought: No, this was merely an Internet stoning. Of course I would be fine. Sticks and stones may break my bones, but words can never hurt me.

Yet I was surprised how much words did hurt. Had I always been so sensitive? Or had my work environment changed? When I first began working as a journalist, readers would send in letters to the editor the old-fashioned way. It took effort and money to write thoughts down on paper, address an envelope, look up the postal code, stick on a stamp and drop the letter in an actual mailbox. Now people just typed fast and smacked the send button.

As the furor intensified, other media began besieging me with interview requests. I turned them down because I didn’t want to become the news any more than I already was.

The senior editors agreed. “If we keep our heads down, it will blow over very quickly. We don’t want to fan the flames,” advised Sylvia Stead, the Globe’s deputy editor, who was in charge of legal matters and was the most powerful woman in the newsroom. My editors and I were on the same page. We were a team. It was all of us on the inside against the crazies on the outside.

On Thursday evening, I was finishing up another article when a colleague in the Montreal bureau phoned me at home. He also had been grappling with the fallout from my Dawson story and now, as part of his bureau duties, he was letting me know that an extremist website had launched an attack on my family.

Le Québécois had labeled my 86-year-old father a “convicted criminal,” and said that he had served 31 months in prison for an immigration scam. My colleague added that the website also was calling for a boycott of my family’s Montreal restaurant, Bill Wong’s Inc. This is how Patrick Bourgeois, the website’s editor, put it: “Perhaps they try to take revenge against pure laine Québecois stock in selling cat or rat disguised as chicken.”

Given the virulent response to my Dawson article, I had no doubt there would be a boycott. I began to shake. I had maintained my equilibrium all week, but now my family was under attack and it was entirely my fault. I didn’t yet know that one symptom of depression is all-consuming guilt. I didn’t yet know that narcissism, another symptom, intensifies the guilt. I had written about the Dawson shootings and therefore I had ruined my father’s good name and jeopardized the family business.

My colleague in the Montreal bureau was still on the phone. “Of course it’s not your father [who has the criminal record],” he continued. “It’s another man, in his forties, with the same name. I know because I wrote the original story.”

I asked my colleague what I should do.

“Your father has deep pockets,” he said, ending the call. Newsroom culture is like that. There’s no time for handholding. Everyone is on a deadline. I’m sure my colleague in Montreal had no idea how it felt on my end, but I felt utterly abandoned. The racial attack shattered me. Looking back, I believe this was the exact moment I began my descent into depression.

I let out a scream and burst into tears. My sons Ben and Sam came running. Not knowing what had happened, they wrapped me in hugs — the way I had done when they were toddlers and they had bumped their knees.

Unless you have experienced racism, it is hard to explain its corrosiveness. You feel frightened and violated and impotent all at once. When race is perceived to be a factor, the hurt from almost any slight, even an innocent, unintended one, can last a lifetime.

Before she married my father, my mother worked as an operating-room nurse in Montreal for Wilder Penfield, the renowned neurosurgeon. Mom had loved her job, and reminisced about how she could slap the correct scalpel into his palm before he could ask for it. She also never forgot that she was the only team member he had not once invited to his Westmount home.

Ben was four when we went sightseeing in Gravenhurst, a bucolic Ontario town. At one point, we stopped at a park where several white boys, all about 10 years old, were playing. I was preoccupied with Sam when I suddenly noticed the older boys had left and Ben was missing. I found him crouching under a slide. Only after much coaxing, he told me that when he had approached the boys, one of them had pointed to a discarded soft drink can, in which a wasp was crawling out of the opening, and said, “Hey, Chinese boy. Kick that.” Now, at 19, Ben remembers every detail of that day.

The attack by Le Québécois was only the beginning. The next morning, a caricature in Le Devoir, a respected Quebec daily, showed me opening fortune cookies to decode the news. The sketch depicted me with buckteeth and Coke-bottle-bottom glasses, an echo of the anti-Japanese stereotypes of the Second World War. My race was irrelevant to my reporting. To my surprise, my eyes filled with tears.

It was Friday, the end of a horrible week. The Globe’s editor-in-chief summoned me to a meeting. Edward Greenspon was waiting in his office, a glassed-in box on the edge of the newsroom. Shakily, I took a seat across from him. Without preamble, he pushed a copy of my Dawson article across the table. He had circled the offending paragraphs with a black marker.

“This should have been taken out, or it should have been labeled ‘analysis,’ ” he said, pointing to the marked passages. “I want you to go through this, line by line, and tell me if there’s anything you have changed your mind about.”

Startled, I asked if he had read the story before publication. He pulled the newspaper back across the table and scanned the article. “I remember reading about the daycare,” he said slowly. “That section comes after [the pure laine reference], so I guess I did.”

Greenspon had become the top editor at the Globe after a solid career of reporting on the political scene in Ottawa. He understood news. He also understood the complicated situation in Quebec. I was puzzled why he was asking me to justify something he had already vetted himself. It turned out that he was planning to write about me in his Saturday commentary.

“Tomorrow, my column is going to have two things, one positive and one negative,” he told me. “You’re the negative. I’m going to say you erred.”

I thought our strategy was to keep our heads down. Hadn’t his deputy told me it was best not to “fan the flames”? Perhaps the editor-in-chief hadn’t heard about the caricature in that morning’s Le Devoir. Perhaps he didn’t know that the previous night an extremist website had slandered my father and called for a boycott of my family’s restaurant. I told him I felt a line had been crossed when a reporter’s family or race was attacked. I mentioned the many interview requests I had received. I asked if he could accept one of them and use the opportunity to condemn these attacks on my family and me.

“I can’t control the message if I do interviews [with other media],” Greenspon said, shaking his head. “I prefer to write in the paper. I can control it that way.”

I felt utterly abandoned. In the past, I had always had the unwavering support of my paper whenever I had been savaged for my work. Not this time, it seemed.

I was despondent when I returned to my desk and checked the latest hate email. “Hey Wong, I have seen the caricature and your picture,” wrote Andre Valiquette. “You are much uglier in real life … Bitch.”

Another wrote: “Go back to barbarian China.”

Suddenly, I had had enough. Now that my newspaper was about to criticize me in print, yet again, I would no longer be silenced. The policy of “keeping our heads down” seemed entirely one-sided. Everyone else was allowed to speak out except me. The Globe & Mail had made it clear that it wouldn’t defend my family or me, so I would have to respond to the attacks myself.

I went back downstairs to the editor-in-chief ‘s office. I told him I had decided to accept a few interviews. “Why don’t you write a commentary for La Presse?” Greenspon said. “I can arrange that.”

Normally, I would have agreed, but I was hollowed out. I had slept badly for days. I did not have the energy left to write a response.

What I did not yet realize was that I couldn’t write anything at all.

http://fullcomment.nationalpost.com/2012/05/20/jan-wong-why-i-was-hated-in-quebec-and-abandoned-in-toronto/

Scotland Yard special constable shouted racial abuse at a rail worker after being accused of fare-dodging on a train from Sussex to London.

Off-duty Luke Smith, 27, rowed with staff on board a train between Gatwick and East Croydon stations.

The Metropolitan Police, which has been blighted by a wave of racism allegations in recent months, described his conviction for a public order offence as "appalling".

Smith, of Carey Gardens, Wandsworth, south London, was fined for the offence at Croydon Magistrates’ Court but cleared of fare evasion.

A British Transport Police (BTP) spokesman said the incident took place in the early hours of October 5 last year.

Smith racially abused a 48-year-old member of rail staff on board the train.

The spokesman said: "BTP officers were called to the scene at around 3.15am and Smith was arrested.

"BTP launched an investigation, spoke to a number of witnesses and viewed CCTV footage.

"Smith was charged on Thursday November 3. At Croydon Magistrates’ Court on Wednesday May 16, Smith was found not guilty of fare evasion and fined for a racially aggravated offence."

The officer has been suspended by Scotland Yard.

Commander Peter Spindler, director of professional standards at the Met Police, said: "This type of appalling behaviour will not be tolerated on or off duty from any member of our staff.

"We are referring this matter to the misconduct unit for further action against the officer."

http://www.theargus.co.uk/news/9716304.Police_officer_fined_for_racist_abuse_on_Gatwick_train/