On June 4, a little over a week after the death of George Floyd, a Wilmington, North Carolina, police sergeant conducting routine checks of dash-cam footage found video of two cops discussing, among other things, the arrival of “martial law.” “We are just gonna go out and start slaughtering them fucking ni‐‐‐‐‐,” one of the cops, Michael “Kevin” Piner, said. “I can’t wait. God I can’t wait.”
Piner was fired on Wednesday, along with two other white officers—James “Brian” Gilmore, and Jessie E. Moore II—with whom he had conversations filled with racist threats of violence. Video of the conversation has not yet been released. But the comments are quoted in the sergeant’s report about what she heard on the video.
According to the report, Piner also said, of a Black officer, “Let’s see how his boys take care of him when shit gets rough, see if they don’t put a bullet in his head.” He also complained that he saw videos on social media of people “worshipping Blacks.”
Moore gets in on the racism, too, calling someone he’d arrested a “negro” and the n-word, saying she “needed a bullet in her head.” He also calls a Black judicial official a “fucking negro magistrate.”
The conversation broadened out into a discussion of genocide. Per the sergeant’s report: “Officer Piner then explained to Cpl. Moore that he felt society needed a civil war to ‘wipe ’em off the fucking map. That’ll put ’em back about four or five generations.'”
The report notes that, when confronted about their comments, each officer “pointed to the stress of today’s climate in law enforcement as a reason for their ‘venting.’ Each officer also denied being racist.”
