The assistant police chief in Prospect, Kentucky, who was already under investigation for ties to pedophilia, is now without a job after it was revealed that he was sending racist, violent, and sexual private messages to police recruits on Facebook.
Todd Shaw was "a bit of a character," according to Prospect Mayor John Evans, who appeared visibly upset that his town's reputation has been hurt by Shaw's alleged actions.
The private Facebook messages came to light during a criminal investigation alleging Shaw aided LMPD officer Kenneth Betts who was being investigated for allegedly raping a teenage boy enrolled in the Louisville Metro Police Department's Explorer program.
As The Free Thought Project reported in October, Betts and Brandon Wood were accused of running a pedophilia network within the department, using their badges to cover up the fact that they were abusing children. Shaw worked for LMPD for 20 years before retiring and becoming the assistant police chief in Prospect.
Betts reportedly asked Shaw to access the National Crime Information Center database, or NCIC, to run the license plates of undercover officers who were investigating him. That action is considered criminal in the state and Shaw reportedly performed the favor for Betts who was no longer a police officer at the time.
It is unclear whether or not Shaw is also involved in any way with the alleged sexual abuse of teenagers within the LMPD Explorer program. But because he was accused of the crime, an investigation into Shaw's conduct commenced.
Jefferson County Attorney Mike O'Connell then uncovered the private Facebook messages and later drafted a letter to Evans detailing the disturbing messages he discovered. He described the messages. In one exchange with the LMPD recruit, when asked what the recruit should do if he found teenagers smoking marijuana, Shaw reportedly responded:
Fuck the right thing! If Black, shoot them!When asked how to handle juveniles' parents Shaw responded:
Call the parents. If mom is hot then fuck her. If the dad is hot, handcuff him then make him suck my dick...unless daddy is black then shoot him.O'Connell then instructed the mayor to take disciplinary action against the acting chief of police and promised to determine whether or not any pending cases with which Shaw was involved could be prosecuted or would have to be dismissed.
The Facebook messages were filled with references to Blacks as "n-rs," to women who date Black men as "single moms," and they often claimed that Black children did not have fathers and that Martin Luther King Jr. was a racist womanizer whose only purpose was to provide police officers with a day off.
Shaw and his lawyers attempted to keep the private Facebook messages from becoming public but Judge Judith McDonald-Burkman ruled this week that the records must be released. Prosecutors are now in the process of dismissing the nearly two dozen cases where Shaw would potentially have been called as a witness. He was suspended in September and resigned in November 2017 upon the conclusion of the internal investigation.
Taken in its entirety, given Shaw's involvement in helping Betts identify his investigators, his messages to a potential LMPD recruit - who was later dismissed - and his subsequent resignation, the career police officer has now been outed as a racist, a pedophile sympathizer, and most likely a criminal. Fortunately, the LMPD and the city of Prospect were able to take corrective action to ensure more citizens do not end up in the prison industrial complex by the unscrupulous actions and beliefs of a bigot.
WDRB 41 Louisville News
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