Officer Keith Pool has filed an employment discrimination charge against the Sheffield Lake Police Department in Ohio, alleging former police chief Anthony Campo harassed him in a racist manner, per CNN. 

As the department’s first and only Black officer at the time, Pool said it was humiliating and “beyond anything I’ve ever experienced in my entire career” when Campo slapped a “Ku Klux Klan” printout on his raincoat back in June and invited other cops to look at what he did. 

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“Even when we watch it now I am in disbelief that this happened,” Pool said in a virtual news conference, per CNN. “It was so demeaning that in the moment I just didn’t know how to react to it, I felt like I’d been hit with a sledgehammer.” 

“Chief Campo thought that putting the words Ku Klux Klan—a sign—on my rain jacket, and then wearing the Ku Klux Klan hat, was something of a joke. … I would have rather at that point for him to have hit me in my face,” he said.

Campo is also accused of making a KKK-style hat out of paper and instructing Pool to wear it on his next call, a move that was neither the end nor the beginning of his apparent racist behavior. 

Pool claimed that throughout his short time at the police department, Campo had regularly targeted him, with the first instance occurring before he had even officially joined the unit. 

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NBC News reports that, before his first day of work, Campo sent Pool a photo of a vehicle with 20-inch rims and tinted windows instead of the patrol car he would actually be using. Campo was said to have a fascination with pulling over drivers with tinted-window cars, a tactic that has been widely criticized as a manner of unfairly targeting Black people. 

Around Halloween, Campo put a photo of the Grim Reaper on the bulletin board, replacing the figure’s face with Pool’s and calling it “The Raccoon Reaper.” 

Campo, who was the chief for eight years, was removed from the Sheffield Lake Police Department following the aforementioned raincoat incident, which he told WKYC 3News was nothing more than “off-color” humor that had been overblown. 

Pool’s legal team has filed a workplace discrimination complaint with the Ohio Civil Rights Commission, alleging that Campo obstructed his hiring and used the N-word to refer to him throughout the interview process.  

A petition with the state Supreme Court is also in the works, requesting the police department release information that will show Campo repeatedly targeted Pool because of his race, including emails and images from Campo’s work-issued computer. 

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