Memo on Official Police Department Letterhead Refers to “White Power,” Says “These Black Officers Belong in the Toilet”

City officials in Connecticut are investigating a memo printed on official police department letterhead and placed in mailboxes at police headquarters that slanders black and Latino officers and singles out one cop recently cleared of police brutality charges.

The letter referred to "white power" and said "black officers belong in the toilet," Bridgeport police detective Herald Dimbo said at a Wednesday news briefing.

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Dimbo, who is also vice president of The Bridgeport Guardians, a civil rights group, said the department got about three similar hateful letters in the last year.

Dimbo said copies of the letter were discovered in multiple officers' mailboxes and the principal internal mailbox in the department day room, an area limited to police. He said he believes a white member of the department generated the memo and it ended up in the main mailbox by mistake.

It wasn't clear when the memo was put in the mailbox.

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The letter, on paper marked with the department's official letterhead, is addressed to Bridgeport Police Chief Joseph Gaudett and starts off with "WHITE POWER." It goes on to say "Officer Clive Higgins doesn't belong here in this Police Department" and "These Black Officers belong in the toilet."

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"Something like this coming through the police department, it just never should have happened," Dimbo said, "This type of behavior affects a minority and spreads racism and hatred throughout the Bridgeport Police Department as well as the community."

Higgins was recently acquitted in a 2011 police brutality case in which officers were caught on camera beating a suspect at Beardsley Park and shooting him with a stun gun. Two other officers were convicted.

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"He's not getting his gun or his badge back. He didn't even support his fellow Officers in Court," the letter continues. "Where were you Higgins ?? You better watch your back.. We know where you live."

The letter alleges both the chief and assistant chief want Higgins out of the department.

In the 1980s, the Bridgeport department was placed under a "federal remedy order as a result of being found guilty of discriminatory practice," Dimbo said.

The order was in effect for nearly 30 years before being lifted in 2012.

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Dimbo, a 27-year cop, said he has already received hundreds of calls from residents concerned about the letter, and said that "if a person is walking around in the police department with this type of hatred in them," it poses a concern for the safety of black and Latino youth in the community.

Brett Broesder, communications director for the city of Bridgeport, said officials are prepared to take action against whoever is behind the derogatory note.

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"Bottom line is that any discussion of discrimination within any part of the city is something we have a zero-tolerance policy on," Broesder said. "If there is any wrongdoing found in the situation, swift, fair, immediate action will be taken."

The National Association of Black Law Enforcement Officers is also supporting the Bridgeport Guardians on the issue. National organization President Hubert Smith called for an investigation into the incident by an outside party like the state police and demanded the "immediate termination" of all involved in "perpetrating these acts of domestic, racial terrorism and violence."