A Cincinnati law enforcement officer’s police powers have been suspended pending a disciplinary hearing after a body camera and dash camera caught her saying a racial slur while on duty in April.
Officer Rose Valentino was in a marked police vehicle stuck in a school pickup line outside Western Hills University High School when she used a racial slur following an incident with a male student who gave her the middle finger, according to an internal investigation.
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“Oh, I hate them so much. I hate this f*****g world. F*****g n*****s. I fucking hate them,” Valentino said after rolling up her window as the teenager walked by.
Prior to the incident, Valentino was stuck behind several cars waiting to pick up students from the school when she activated her lights to signal cars to move and allegedly yelled over an air horn, “You got to move. F*****g ridiculous,” the report said, according to FOX19.
After Valentino told a woman to move her car, the teenager raised his middle finger at her. Moments after saying the racial slur, Valentino turned off her body camera.
Valentino admitted to using the slur to investigators after the incident, saying she was frustrated that she was not being taken seriously and had been desensitized to the word by music and hearing it in interactions with other people.
“This is a hard job, and I was getting to a point where I was really being affected by it. I have been on for 14 years,” Valentino told investigators.
Valentino’s actions were found to be in violation of the department’s rules prohibiting offensive comments concerning characteristics, including race, as well as the City of Cincinnati’s discrimination harassment regulation. An investigation into the incident has been closed, and its findings have been signed off on by Cincinnati interim Police Chief Teresa Theetge.
It is unclear what type of disciplinary action Valentino may face, though her police powers have been suspended during the disciplinary hearing process, and the city’s regulations require a 40-hour suspension for the first offense for employees who use a racial slur while on duty.
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Valentino has been a police officer since December 2008.
The Washington Examiner reached out to the Cincinnati Police Department for comment.
