ARKANSAS COP'S BID TO OVERTURN FIRING AFTER CAUGHT ON VIDEO CALLING BLACKS "JIGABOOS" IS DENIED

DAVID EGMON

David Edgmon, 24, a former police officer in Little Rock, Arkansas, was fired in 2010 after he was caught on camera calling several Black men “jigaboo,” and on Friday afternoon, an appellate court upheld that decision, reports OpposingViews.com.
Edgmon was drunk the summer night of 2010 when he approached a group of Black men outside of Ernie Biggs Piano Bar and told them to stop “blowing weed in my face.”

The men were filming Edgmon and once he realized it, he drunkenly waved his badge and said, “Get out of my f—ing face. Get this illegal product, f—ing jigaboo s— out of my f—ing face.”

The video was later uploaded to YouTube and a Pulaski County Circuit Court ruled that Edgmon was guilty of “engaging in conduct unbecoming an officer, engaging in personal conduct which could result in justified criticism of the officer or the department, and being intoxicated in public view.”

Though Edgmon testified that he did not realize that “jigaboo” was an offensive term, Police Chief Stuart Thomas didn’t believe him.

Courthouse News Service has more:

The Little Rock Civil Service Commission reduced Edgmon’s firing to a suspension, but the Police Department went to Pulaski County Circuit Court and had the firing reinstated. 

Edgmon took the case to the Arkansas Court of Appeals, arguing that in the 1990s, an officer came to a Fraternal Order of Police Halloween party in blackface, wearing an Afro wig and coveralls and carrying a watermelon. He was suspended for 30 days. 

In an opinion written by Judge Larry D. Vaught, the appeals court ruled that the lower court properly excluded Edgmon’s evidence of that incident as “too distant in time.” 

“We agree that the probative value of an event that occurred 20 years prior, under a different administration, is minimal, and refusal of the evidence does not amount to a manifest abuse of discretion,” he wrote.