New court documents revealed a lengthy collection of racist text messages showing a former San Jose officer candidly using the N-word and condemning a civil rights lawsuit brought against him by a Black man he shot last year.
Former officer Mark McNamara was sued for shooting college football player K’Aun Green last March after Green had broken up a fight inside a restaurant. Three drunken men reportedly jumped him and one of them pulled out a ghost gun. Green wrestled the gun away from the man and tried to back out of the restaurant to keep other customers safe while keeping the gun away from the men who attacked him.
McNamara shot 22-year-old Green four times after officers arrived. Police initially thought he was connected to a homicide that happened less than a mile from the restaurant that they were investigating when they got the call about the fight.
Green survived the shooting, but it took months for him to recover from his injuries. He filed a federal civil rights lawsuit against the San Jose Police Department and the city of San Jose last year.
McNamara ended up resigning from the department last November just days before a text conversation he had with another officer came to light in which he bragged about the shooting and made disparaging, racist remarks about Green and violent threats against Green’s attorneys.
That conversation, which happened last June, included McNamara saying of Green, “N***a wanted to carry a gun in the Wild West. Not on my watch haha,” and “I hate black people more than I hate being a cop.”
He also sent this racist text message about Green’s attorney, Adanté Pointer, after a deposition about the shooting: “The other day this n— lawyer is like Mr. McNamara, you know we can still find you guilty of excessive force right? I’m like, hmmm yeah then (what) happens?? … Think I give a f— what y’all n— think?!???? I’ll shoot you too!!!!!”
The identity of the officer McNamara was texting hasn’t been released by police officials, but that person has reportedly been on administrative leave for months.
Police Chief Anthony Mata described the texts as “disgusting” and said that the police department has “zero tolerance for even a single expression of racial bias.”
Newly Revealed Text Messages
A federal judge recently ordered the city to release a set of texts to Green’s attorneys that hadn’t previously been disclosed. Green’s attorneys included them in new court documents filed this month.
In that newly-released chain of messages that were exchanged between June 2023 and July 2023, McNamara is seen sending more texts about Green, the civil rights case, and making rampant, casual use of the N-word throughout several conversations.
“I don’t give a s**t about this case. I’m white, he’s black, he’s gonna win. AND I DONT CARE. It’s like b**ch whatever they decide has no bearing on me what so ever. It’s basically kangaroo court,” one text reads.
In another set of texts, he asks, “Yo n***a, what are your pronouns????,” before saying, “Mine are n***a and n****r.”
Another text reads, “You’d have to put a gun to my head to get me to pull over a call full of n*gs.”
These messages were exchanged with an officer who left the San Jose police force in 2020 and joined another police department in a different state. He no longer works at that department after the San Jose Police Department notified the force about its investigation into the text messages.
