"At one Oklahoma jail, African-American employees were designated with a racially offensive term, a former sheriff admitted in court on Monday.
An Oklahoma sheriff admitted that staff in his jail referred to black employees as “n*gronoids,” according to bombshell testimony in a Tulsa courthouse yesterday.
The shocking allegation came during the wrongful death trial for Elliott Williams—a 37-year-old Army vet who died at the Tulsa County jail in 2011. He was paralyzed on the floor of his cell and pleading for help for days, a federal lawsuit filed by his family claims.
On Monday, court testimony focused on accusations of systemic failures in the jail’s health care, and alleged racist practices within the sheriff’s office.
Former Sheriff Stanley Glanz testified that he didn’t take issue with the racially offensive terms “n*gronoids” or “n*groids,” stating that the FBI used them to describe African-American people in the 1960s or ’70s.
Glanz resigned in late 2015 following a two-count misdemeanor indictment (unrelated to the Williams case) relating to abuse of office.
The racist terminology was broached by Dan Smolen, an attorney for Williams’s estate who has also represented former employees who sued the Tulsa jail for racial discrimination. (A handful of cases filed by former lockup workers cost the county nearly $1 million to defend and settle, the Tulsa World reported.)
Glanz copped to using the word “n*gronoid” to refer to African-American staff during a 2015 deposition for a racial discrimination case, court records reveal. (That case was later dismissed on summary judgment in favor of Glanz, in his individual capacity, and current sheriff Vic Regalado, in his official capacity, court records show.)
On Monday night, Smolen told The Daily Beast that he first learned of jailers’ alleged use of the term after obtaining a 2006 memo (PDF) with the letter “N” marked next to the names of certain employees, along with an “M” or “F” to indicate gender."
At Deadly Jail, Black Staff Marked With ‘N’ - The Daily Beast
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