Barstow police officer charged with hate crime, battery

A Barstow police officer is facing hate crime and battery charges for allegedly using racial slurs against a man and assaulting the victim and a woman in Hesperia, San Bernardino County authorities said Friday.

Jimmy Alfred Walker, 30, of Victorville was arrested in August by San Bernardino County sheriff’s deputies responding to a disturbance call in the 11200 block of Fifth Avenue shortly after midnight.

Walker, who is white, allegedly assaulted a 32-year-old man and a 31-year-old woman at the scene, police said. After deputies arrived and in their presence, he then allegedly directed racial epithets toward the man. The race of the victims was not immediately available.

Walker was charged Monday with one misdemeanor count of violating the man’s civil rights, two counts of battery and one count of disturbing the peace.

The officer was charged under a hate crime statute that makes it unlawful to use force, threats or intimidation to interfere with another person’s rights because of disability, gender, nationality, race, religion or sexual orientation.

Walker was released on $50,000 bail after his arrest. He is due to appear on the misdemeanor charges Dec. 13 in a Victorville court.

After his arrest, Walker was assigned to stay home by the Barstow Police Department, pending a resolution to the allegations.

Walker joined the department in May 2009 after working as a San Bernardino County sheriff's deputy.

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Comments

[ons el sonador]

a racist cop?whats new...

[Angeles]

LOL cops and DAs scratching each others backs, what happened to the felony charges? If this was an ordinary citizen they would have been charged with a felony.

Typical, I hope the man sues the Barstow police dept and the cop.

[uncle_vito]

Now he gets to take a vacation at full pay.

Must be nice to have a job where you get paid vacation for being a jerk.

[Brad]

worst part is he is sitting at home watching tv and getting paid still....racist losers are sad people...they project onto others so they dont have to look in the mirror at themselves!!!!

[kgoddess]

And another example of why I hate & fear cops.

[Hooah]

$50,000 bail for a misdemeanor charge - I guess he's a flight risk.

[nls73m]

Victorville? I'm not surprised...

[obama]

Not defending this cop but in general, they get falsely accused of stuff every day so people can try n avoid jail. This is why they are put on leave. If found guilty he will lose everything.

[Streets]

A police officer is arrested every day in America!

[KW]

No "under color of authority" charges? Was he off duty?

[John]

"ons el sonador" writes "a racist cop?what's new..." Aren't you stereotyping the police? Isn't stereotyping any group, or specific type of person a form of predjudice? If so, then you're just as short sighted as the Bartow cop if you believe all cops are racist. You're hanging a tag on all cops that applies to a limited few that make bad headlines. Just like it would be easy for me, based on your tag name, to question your citizenship. Then I'd be stereotyping you wouldn't I? Not cool in any form or for any reason. Look in the mirror pal!

[Eric of Reseda]

Yes, another racist cop, and @ John below, it's not stereoptyping. "ons el sonador" didn't say ALL cops. He's simply addressing the HIGH number of police officers who display racist behavior.

Any cop in the big cities has a short shelf-life before he or she becomes racist. It's the elephant in the room. And we're not just talking about white cops. Hispanic and black cops begin to display racist behavior as well, even toward others of hteir own race. Why? Because the fact is, these cops are dealing with far too many criminials and ugliness in the ghettos and barrios. They naturally become racist. It's a problem in law enforcement they don't like to publicize much...

[Common Sense]

It makes the blood boil when a racist, barely high-school educated hick gets a grossly overpaid police officer's job with an unsustainably expensive pension benefit, and administrative time-off to play video games on the couch. I would not mind so much, except that as a taxpayer I am paying his way...

[Pete Malloy]

How is it that they know the officer was white but can't say what race the victims were?

Guilty or not, the reporting is swayed or the police don't want to release the info cause of PC.

[tony]

"The race of the victims was not immediately available" I see, LA times don't want to tell the whole story. Thanks A lot

[Maria G.]

The witnessing Sheriffs said the officer was using racial slurs, proof in itself, so dismiss people claim racism and excessive force was fabricated to get out of going to jail.

Racism in every department is institutional, not just individual, because there is a greater proportion of crime committed om Hispanic and black communities doesn't justify mandating officers behave a certain way with those communities.

Institutional, because it does not stop at the street level but throughout the judicial system. Case and point: A minority arrested for domestic violence is five times more likely to be incarcerated than their white counterpart, who may walk away with probation.

While whites are more likely to use, and sell powder cocaine, blacks use and sell more crack and are sentenced to the recently reduced 18 to 1 ratio, where an white person would have to be caught with 18 times the amount of powder to get the same sentence of a black person convicted on, because it is rationalized that crack is more addictive. But the system does not recognize that you can't make crack without powder.

Until the playing field of justice is leveled it will be taught, and it doesnt matter rather or not an officer is Hispanic or black, their taught tactics from the same playbook, and the book is a raciest manual

[bastante]

If God were to give the earth an enema,guess what state it would be in? I can't wait for california to crumble into the Pacific.

[Park McGraw]

1 of 2

With in most all people's inner circle of human contact, a group of individuals not much larger or smaller in population then what nature would deem most efficient for basic survival, that racism, a.k.a. hate crime and another form of tribalism will most always be present. Not always visible, but a naturally forming element in every person and humanity as a whole. A sort of "failsafe" impregnated in our genes much in the same way as the near universal fear of needles.

Therefore, the notion that people, when resources are being challenged or under stress would be incline to perform or speak in a manner reflecting integration, an "unnatural human act" in it's most pure form, is absurd.

Hence, our society's fervent pursuit to temper this behavior to the levels to which the subject is addressed amounts to little more than a decadent and highly inefficient form of social experimentation. A form of errant social manipulation that is presented in legislation forced upon the people of the USA by special interest groups for the past 90 years. One based on wishful desires and misdirected hope, predicated by misplaced guilt for acting and behaving like normal humans.

A "unnatural" forced indoctrination.

[Park McGraw]

2 of 2

An approach by our nation's leaders that fails to understand what constitutes a fully functional social agenda. That a fully functioning social agenda is operable at all levels of society and continues to be valid and remain functional even when a society is under duress. As appose to an agenda that only functions under brief moments of idea social and economic conditions.

A qualifier that if implemented, would crash most modern social programs. Programs modeled, if at all, on expensive utopian environments. That our leaders fail to understand tribalism, the collective form creating our nation, is normal and an essential element in "cultural evolution".

Therefore, racism being a form of cultural evolution will not be stopped outside of the USA. A force that has been shown over history will not be squelched. From scores of places, the Middle East, India, Germany, Japan, Yugoslavia ... a force motivated by basic survival, that in the end prevails.

People in our country fervently wishing to behave contrary to what ones genes understand as prudent to survival are only introducing a falsehood. That using today's definition of hate crime and racism would imply degrading just about every major and minor leader in the world, pre 20th century, as flagrant hate crime criminals and should be referred and remembered in such way.

[John]

OK Eric in Reseda - And a HIGH number of Catholic priests are perverts; A HIGH number of Muslims are terrorists; a HIGH number of South LA blacks are Crips or Bloods; A HIGH number or East LA hispanics are Mexican Mafia; A HIGH number of Asians are bad drivers; and a HIGH number of whites believe everything I just wrote. Where do the generalizations stop? Your perspective is just as flawed as the HIGH number of racist cops out there.

[Centurion 48]

@ Eric of Reseda "Any cop in the big cities has a short shelf-life before he or she becomes racist.Hispanic and black cops begin to display racist behavior as well, even toward others of hteir own race."

I happened to be an African American Officer. I can tell you from my personal experience that for me it is not the race the 10% of the population we deal with that revolts me, it is the level of ignorance that 10% displays and whole heartedly embraces as a way of life. I have been an Officer for 14 years, my shelf life is good for another 16 years. By the way, you keep making broad generalizations like the statements I quoted you on and you would be considered a racist.

[Maxmax]

Show photo so we know who to avoid in the supermarket.