Racist Cop Threatened To Shoot Lawyers In Brutality Case: Attorney

SAN JOSE, CA — The attorney for a man shot by a San Jose police officer says the officer threatened in newly disclosed messages to shoot the lawyers suing him for excessive use of force.

In a statement Saturday, Adante Pointer, the Oakland-based civil rights attorney for K'Aun Green, said he would detail the threat in a press conference Sunday.

The messages were made public Friday by San Jose Police Chief Anthony Mata, who said Officer Mark McNamara was no longer employed by the city after an internal investigation uncovered texts including, "I hate black people."

Pointer said McNamara shot Green four times at a San Jose restaurant in 2022. In the messages, Pointer said, McNamara repeatedly used the N-word to describe the victim and his attorneys and said he would shoot the lawyers representing Green.

"Think I give a f--- what y'all nigs think?!???? I'll shoot you too!!!!! AHHHHHH!!!!!!" McNamara wrote in a June 23 text exchange with a fellow officer. Pointer said it followed a deposition McNamara gave as attorneys prepared a civil rights lawsuit.

"There was like 65 African lookin mother f---ers there too. All just mean mugging me and taking notes. They should all be bowing to me and brining me gifts since I saved a fellow n---- by making him rich as f---. Otherwise he woulda lived a life of poverty and crime," McNamara wrote in another text later in the conversation.

McNamara "now seeks to aim his racial animus at Mr. Green's attorneys, several of whom are Black," Pointer said.

"Given his deep-seated racist beliefs, McNamara should never be given the privilege of carrying a badge and gun again, nor be placed in any position where those beliefs can be weaponized against Black people," Pointer said.

Mata said McNamara had been with the department for six years and was involved in a police shooting at a La Victoria Taqueria in downtown San Jose on March 27, 2022.

Pointer said Green was a Contra Costa College sophomore quarterback at the time of the shooting but would not be able to realize his dreams of playing professional football because of his injuries.

He said Green was a customer in the restaurant when a gunman pointed a weapon at him and other customers. Green disarmed the gunman and was fighting his way out of the front door, with the weapon's barrel pointed up, when police coming up behind him fired without warning.

Green was shot twice in the arm, once in the knee, and once in the abdomen, according to a lawsuit against the city filed a month after the shooting. He was not charged with a crime, the suit says.

Surveillance video from the restaurant released by police at the time showed two groups of men involved in a fight. One of the men had a gun that changed hands between combatants at least twice during the melee.

When the fight moved outside of the restaurant, police saw a man with a handgun and said they asked him to drop the gun. One officer fired shots that hit the man, who was taken to a hospital with non-lethal injuries.

The name of the officer was not released at the time.

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