Updated Friday, February 10, 2023, at 1:14 p.m.
Following a complaint that a group of state troopers had used racial slurs, misogynistic rhetoric and other degrading language in online party games, Vermont’s top law enforcement official initially declined to investigate, according to internal emails obtained by VTDigger through a public records request.
A constituent of Sen. Nader Hashim, D-Windham, emailed him Monday morning about an off-duty gathering of state troopers during which they used the racial slur “NAPA,” an acronym for “North American pavement ape,” while playing the games. The law enforcement officers had gathered with their significant others at the home of one of the troopers, according to the email.
Hashim, a former state trooper himself, immediately reported the incident to Sgt. Ryan Wood of the Westminster Barracks, according to the emails. The complaint was quickly elevated to Public Safety Commissioner Jennifer Morrison, who oversees the Vermont State Police.
Just after 1 p.m. Monday, the emails show, Lt. Robert McKenna of the Vermont State Police responded to Hashim and the constituent to acknowledge that top brass had received the complaint of “an unidentified group of state troopers playing a game while off duty where a racist term was repeatedly used.”
But, McKenna said, no action would be taken.
“I have shared your email outlining these allegations with Department of Public Safety Commissioner, Jennifer Morrison,” McKenna wrote. “At this time, Commissioner Morrison has declined to open an internal investigation into this matter citing a lack of sufficient information.”
At 2:51 p.m., Hashim replied to McKenna by email saying that his constituent had identified the troopers. The constituent, in a follow-up email to McKenna at 3:53 p.m., provided the lieutenant a link to what the troopers wrote in one of the online games, Mad Verse City, in which participants compete to write the best rap verses.
The constituent identified one trooper, Nathan Jensen, as having played under the username “Lil Cumdrop.”
In the raps, the participants used the N-word and other racist slurs targeting Black and Latino people. Players of the game also used the homophobic F-word and a slur targeting people with intellectual disabilities. Many of the raps were misogynistic and sexually explicit in nature, with one referencing a “gang bang.”
“If being racist is right then I’ll never be wrong,” reads one line of a rap allegedly written by Jensen.
Eight players participated in the game at the trooper’s home, according to online archives of the game reviewed by VTDigger. Following publication of this story on Thursday, one of those participants, Brianna Michel, contacted VTDigger on Friday and provided additional information.
According to Michel, the players included four state troopers and their four significant others. Michel was dating one of the troopers at the time but the two have since broken up, she said. She declined to identify those present, other than Jensen.
Michel said the group gathered for game nights at least once a month and that “some questionable things” had happened at previous gatherings. But, she said, “It’s never been this outright disgusting before — not around me, anyway.”
Michel said she had confided in her then-boyfriend at the time that the incident had made her uncomfortable but that he had “kind of brushed it off.”
“It’s just disheartening that these people that I trust would condone behavior like this,” she said.
Jensen did not respond to numerous requests for comment. VTDigger attempted to contact him via his work email Wednesday evening and Thursday morning and left a phone message with the barracks Wednesday evening. A phone number associated with Jensen had been disconnected.
“I understand you’ve been reaching out to various troopers regarding your story,” Vermont State Police spokesperson Adam Silverman wrote in an email to VTDigger Thursday morning, before adding that “individual troopers will not be responding” to interview requests.
Two days after Hashim first reported the incident to Vermont State Police — and after VTDigger began investigating the allegations — the Department of Public Safety reversed course and launched an internal investigation, Silverman said Wednesday. Citing the confidential nature of that investigation, which he said began at 2:30 p.m. Wednesday, Silverman rejected an interview request with Morrison, the public safety chief.
“Since the initial complaint was brought forward, the Vermont State Police has received additional information about this matter, and Commissioner Morrison has directed the Office of Internal Affairs to conduct an investigation,” Silverman wrote at 5 p.m. Wednesday. “Due to state law regarding the confidentiality of internal investigations, the state police and Department of Public Safety are unable to provide any additional details.”
Silverman later added that the initial complaint alleging the use of racial slurs by state troopers “did not contain sufficient information for the opening of an investigation.”
Many of the raps describe sexual activity in violent detail. One read, “I’ll fuck your mom to shreds.” Another, allegedly by Jensen, read, “You want to be me but you’re just too (N-word)ly. Now warch (sic) me lay my dick on your face, nice and gingerly.”
Another rap used the name of a trooper who was not present and a term degrading toward people with intellectual disabilities: “Haven’t you heard? I can’t be (R-word). My names (trooper’s name) and I’m the smartest.”
A player who went by the username “Laqueefa” in one rap referenced higher-ups within the Westminster Barracks, saying they “crop dusted (a sergeant) in the halls.” The person then said, “You’ll never guess whos sargent got butt fucked,” before identifying a colleague by name.
Hashim, the state senator and former trooper, told VTDigger Thursday morning that, upon reading the accounts provided Monday morning and afternoon by his constituent, he found the troopers’ rhetoric “shocking and very disappointing.”
“One of the things that I valued about the State Police was, they have these really high standards for their members. And obviously, this language that’s being used, in my opinion, it does not meet those standards,” Hashim said. “I think that there shouldn’t be any tolerance for a police officer, whether they’re on-duty or off-duty, to be using these types of racial slurs, whether it’s in jest or seriously.”
Asked how troopers’ off-duty speech is related to their work, Hashim said, first, “there’s the obvious concern about racial bias.”
“And then there’s a secondary concern about judgment in general,” he continued. “It should be very basic, simple knowledge in this day and age that it’s not OK to use the N-word. It’s not OK to use racial slurs. There’s really no — there’s no wiggle room there, in my opinion.”
He declined to comment on the public safety department’s response time to launch an investigation, “because, you know, I don’t know the inner workings or the processes of the internal affairs wing of the Vermont State Police.”
Asked for comment on the matter from Gov. Phil Scott late Wednesday, spokesperson Jason Maulucci said the governor “does not have enough information yet to comment on this particular situation, but he has full faith and confidence in Commissioner Morrison and the Department to investigate the matter.
“The Governor believes Commissioner Morrison has done an outstanding job as commissioner, and has a distinguished record in law enforcement,” Maulucci wrote in an emailed statement.
James Lyall, executive director of the American Civil Liberties Union of Vermont, told VTDigger on Thursday that he saw it differently. Morrison’s initial decision not to launch an investigation “reflects highly questionable judgment,” he said.
“The people of Vermont have a right to know — the right to know if officers enforcing our laws have bigoted views. They have a right to question whether people who would do this sort of thing should be enforcing our laws,” Lyall said. “And given the state’s inability or unwillingness to remedy systemic racism in law enforcement, to address racial profiling and discriminatory policing statewide, those questions should take on added urgency.”
“And so another question people have a right to ask is: Why didn’t (the Department of Public Safety) respond with that urgency?” Lyall continued. “As soon as they saw this — as in, immediately. Clearly that should have happened.”
Editor’s note: Following publication of this story on Thursday, Brianna Michel, a participant in the event, provided additional information about it on Friday. The earlier version of the story noted that one of the participants had identified themself in a rap by a name matching that of a trooper in the Westminster barracks. Michel clarified that the trooper in question had not been present and that another participant had used his name to mock him. VTDigger has removed that trooper’s name from this story.