*Melbourne, Australia: *One of Australia’s top police officers has quitafter being linked to crude racist, sexist and pornographic online poststhat his boss described Tuesday as “shocking”.
Victoria state’s Assistant Commissioner Brett Guerin, who was also anethics chief, resigned late Monday after an explosive report in Melbourne’sThe Age newspaper detailing numerous YouTube posts written under hisalleged online pseudonym “Vernon Demerest”.
“It is behaviour that is completely and utterly unacceptable at VictoriaPolice,” Victoria Police Chief Commissioner Graham Ashton told reporters.
“There are a lot of shocked people … It’s completely out of characterwith what we know the assistant commissioner has been doing.”
“Demerest”, the name of the character played by actor Dean Martin in the1970 movie “Airport”, made racist remarks that included references to”third world dullards” and “Indian and Pakistani peasant (s)”, thenewspaper reported.
Some alleged posts by Guerin, including for videos about Somali pirates andof Argentina losing to the Netherlands in the 1998 World Cup, are tooracially offensive to publish.
“Demerest” also wrote sexually explicit comments about Australian sportingmatches, the Age said.
Guerin was already on suspension and being investigated by the police’santi-corruption watchdog after revelations last week that he made vulgarsexual remarks on a website about a former female police commissioner and apolice union chief.
He admitted to a Melbourne radio station he had written the online commentsunder the same fake name, and that he was ashamed about his mother anddaughters reading them.
“The language I used … was completely inappropriate, embarrassing and Ican understand people saying ‘what the hell is this bloke doing?’,” Guerin,a policeman for more than four decades, told commercial station 3AW stationlast week.
“The reason I did it under a fake name is clearly if I had gone in with myown name, it would have been associated with Victoria Police.”
Ashton stressed that the scandal was not a reflection of the wider cultureamong his officers.
“We will be talking to the emerging community, multicultural communitiesthat we have been working with for a long time and making sure that theyknow it is not representative of the views of Victoria Police,” he said. -APP/AFP