POLICE CHIEF NEEDED TO GOT RID OF A NEO-NAZI OFFICER
Feeling defeated, he turned to God, he said. “Give
me the patience, give me the understanding, give me the knowledge,” Scarlette prayed. “Let me be the leader you want me to be.”
Around 6 a.m. one Friday last year, Springfield Police Chief Ken Scarlette was jolted awake by a call from his deputy, whose tone was grim: “We have a problem here.”
The problem was Aaron Paul Nichols, an officer with 18 years’ service who also had served for two decades as a U.S. military reservist. Anonymous activists had released an online report unmasking Nichols as a white supremacist behind tens of thousands of social media posts seething with hate.
Because of the timing — April 1, 2022 — Scarlette wondered for a
second whether this was an April Fools’ prank on the new boss. He had been sworn in just six weeks before. But the details in the exposé left no doubt. As Scarlette read one damning revelation after another, it began to sink in that the Officer Nichols he knew as an even-tempered professional had a secret life spreading neo-Nazi beliefs.
“We’ve got to handle this right now,” he recalled thinking.
Within four hours, Nichols was summoned to a meeting in the chief’s office, where
senior officers and police union leaders already had assembled. Scarlette said he had prayed about how to respond and felt certain about his decision when an unrepentant Nichols showed up with “a proud look on his face ...read more
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