A Mississippi police department has proudly announced its hiring of an officer who was fired from another agency last summer after video captured him telling a group of Latino men that he encountered on duty to “go back to Mexico”.
A social media post Thursday from the police department of Pearl asked community members to join the agency in “giving a warm welcome” to its newest member, Jeremy Rast, whose recorded comments while patrolling the streets of nearby Richland, Mississippi, in June cost him his job as an officer there.
“We’re excited to have him join the team … and look forward to the great work he will bring to our community,” the Pearl police department’s post on Facebook said. “Welcome aboard!!!”
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Pearl’s police department deactivated comments on the post. But of more than 780 reactions to the post that were visible early Friday afternoon, roughly 260 were “angry” and nearly 225 were “haha”, according to the platform.
Rast was part of a group of Richland police officers who responded to reports of a domestic disturbance involving a gun on 2 June, as the Mississippi news station WLBT reported. In view of a camera taking video, Rast ended up telling a group of Latino men to “go back to Mexico or something like … whatever – I don’t care”.
“Just get the fuck out of Richmond for me, please because I do not like y’all being here,” Rast continued. He accused a man of being “illegal”.
Rast later told WLBT that he was not proud of his “inappropriate and unprofessional comments”. When Richland’s police chief, Adrian Ready, learned of them, he fired Rast, saying: “We announce the immediate removal of the officer who made the derogatory slurs. This type of language is not only unacceptable, it undermines the trust and respect that we work hard to build within our community.”
One of the men targeted by the Rast’s tirade is from Honduras. That man and Rast each told WLBT their paths had crossed previously, and the Honduran man had been jailed.
“I will look for you every shift to try [to] arrest you,” Rast can be heard saying on the video.
In June, that man told WLBT he planned to pack up his belongings and move out of Mississippi despite Rast’s dismissal from the Richmond department. “There might be still some more police officers who think of us like him,” he told the outlet.
Rast said to WLBT that he told the man to go back to Mexico because that is where he told Rast his home was. Rast attributed the comments to “a lot of emotions that officers go through”, as WLBT reported.
“Sometimes, that human side of us comes out and we say things like everybody else when we get frustrated with people,” he remarked. “And that was one of those incidents where I didn’t conduct myself professionally – I didn’t refrain from making a comment I shouldn’t have.”
The Pearl police department touted its hiring of Rast three days after Donald Trump began his second US presidency. One of his administration’s earliest priorities has been a mass deportation campaign, marked by raids across US cities and the arrival of additional troops at the country’s border with Mexico.
Pearl and Richland are about four miles away from each other, and they are south-east of Jackson, Mississippi’s capital.