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 The San Francisco police department confirmed on Thursday night
that Michael Robison had stepped down, but was unable to provide
additional details.
The Los Angeles Times reported that Robison, who is a
23-year-veteran and is gay, left the department on Wednesday, citing
his attorney Tony Brass.
"He's a gay police officer that joined the most diverse police
department in the country," Brass told The Times. "He knows what
it's like to be on the wrong end of bigotry, he would never hand
that back to anybody ... As a human being, these messages do not
represent his world view."
The involvement of the four officers, three of whom have not been
officially identified, was revealed in court papers filed last week
in a federal corruption case against Ian Furminger, a former San
Francisco Police Sergeant.
 In them, Furminger uses racial epithets, bragged that a relative was
a slave auctioneer, and joked about the Ku Klux Klan.
"Cross burning lowers blood pressure!" Furminger wrote, according to
court documents. He also sent texts insulting Latinos, the documents
said.
In response, the other officers texted such responses as "White
Power," prosecutors said.
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Other texts, including jokes about one of the others being gay, were
received on officers' phones, prosecutors said.
San Francisco District Attorney George Gascón said on Monday that
prosecutors would study all criminal prosecutions involving the
officers that had been conducted over the past 10 years in light of
the inquiry.
The San Francisco Chronicle reported that the officers were
transferred last month to jobs where they would not have contact
with the public while the messages were investigated.
(Reporting by Curtis Skinner; Editing by Jeremy Laurence)
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