The lawyers for five African-American women suing Antioch police for racial discrimination have accused the city of deleting evidence showing racial bias by an officer, an accusation that the city attorney dismisses as irrelevant and which one African-American resident said does not indicate racial bias in any case.

In a press release, the Lawyers’ Committee for Civil Rights of the San Francisco Bay Area (LCCR) states that the “African-American Section 8 tenants charging Antioch police misconduct … blasted the City for altering audiotapes of police conversations before submitting the tapes to the Court – including editing out an expletive-laden tirade in which officers complain about Section 8 tenants and make coded racial references.”

The LCCR filed a motion to strike some of the city’s submitted evidence from consideration, including an audiotape of police officers W.N. Dillard and Desmond Bittner that the press release states the city submitted in “an attempt to show that the officers treat Section 8 tenants and their landlords in a professional manner.” The LCCR motion complains that the tape has been cut so that it does not include the following discussion between the officers:

Dillard: “I will never rent a Section 8 home, never. Never.”

Bittner: “It is a nightmare.”

Dillard: “They know that if they sit here and act ghetto enough, and scream and holler and yell enough, that decent, reasonable people will finally give in and just go away. Or – or cave in. And that’s what’s happening right now. And I feel sick that I am brokering it.”

The LCCR motion states, “While it is clear why Defendant (City of Antioch) did not want to place this evidence before the Court, it is equally clear that it is highly improper to simply present an excised version as a complete exhibit.”

But City Attorney Lynn Tracy Nerland responded via e-mail that city officials did nothing wrong by not presenting the entirety of the officers’ conversation: “Antioch has provided tens of thousands of documents, tapes, databases etc. to plaintiffs’ attorneys at great cost of police department and other staff resources. Obviously, neither party is going to quote everything in their pleadings.

“Whether Antioch chose to quote a private conversation between two officers sympathizing with the plight of a landlord dealing with a difficult tenant in a page-limited court filing doesn’t change the good work that the (police) Community Action Team is doing with Antioch residents of every background to address persistent criminal, nuisance and drug activities in their neighborhoods to make all Antioch neighborhoods safer.”

LCCR attorney Kendra Fox-Davis said in a phone interview that the term “act ghetto” is racially coded language. “It’s one that came up often in some of the (Antioch) Quality of Life meetings, where community residents would accuse African-American Section 8 recipients of ‘acting ghetto’ and making other comments like ‘they need to go back to Richmond.’ Things that we understand are referring to African-American people and stereotypes,” she said.

“In this particular call, the officer was interacting with an African-American Section 8 recipient, and the conversation appears in that context. He was clearly referring to her and making generalizations about people like her. It wasn’t said to her. It was said after the officers had finished their conversations with her and were just talking amongst themselves.”

But Gary Gilbert, an African-American Antioch resident who has been a prominent supporter of the police, responded in a phone interview that that term is not necessarily racially charged.

“The term ‘ghetto’ is used universally with every race there is,” he said. “It’s not pertinent to any particular race. I am well aware of Hispanics that use it, Asians that use it, whites that use and blacks that use it. It is (referring to) a type of behavior. It’s not a racial term – it’s a behavioral term relevant to how someone acts. Or you can even term it as a socio-economic type of term, too – people that are financially disadvantaged.”

Gilbert said that in numerous dealings with Antioch police he has not detected the racial bias alleged in the lawsuit. “In my opinion, their case (against the police) is coming apart at the seams, and they are grasping at straws to try to find anything they can to give their clients credibility,” he said.

The request by the LCCR and other Bay Area advocacy groups, including the ACLU, to broaden the five women’s complaint into a class action suit applying to hundreds or thousands of Antioch African-American residents, will be considered by U.S. District Court Judge Saundra Brown Armstrong at 1 p.m. on Tuesday, Jan. 12 at the courthouse, 1301 Clay St., Suite 400, in Oakland.