Five officers have sued the city of Palo Alto, alleging that a city-sanctioned Black Lives Matter mural contains anti-police images, constituting harassment and discrimination against law enforcement.
The mural was painted last June in the street across from City Hall following the killing of George Floyd by Minneapolis Officer Derek Chauvin.
The 245-foot long mural was intended to stay up for a year, but it was gone by November, according to reporting by The Daily Post in Palo Alto.
The mural included an image of Joanne Chesimard, who goes by the name Assata Shakur and was convicted in the 1973 killing of a New Jersey state trooper, according to the lawsuit filed last month in Santa Clara County Superior Court. Shakur escaped from prison and fled to Cuba and has yet to be found.
The lawsuit mentions that the mural included the logo of the New Black Panthers, which the Southern Poverty Law Center has labeled a hate group for encouraging violence against white and Jewish people and law enforcement.
"Law enforcement officers, including Plaintiffs, were forced to physically pass and confront the Mural and its offensive, discriminatory, and harassing iconography every time they entered the Palo Alto Police Department," the lawsuit said.
Officers told officials that the mural violated the state Fair Employment and Housing Act. But the city "ratified the conduct and insisted that it remain and persist," according to the lawsuit.
In July 2020, the National Police Association demanded the mural’s removal, saying it was an "atrocity" to celebrate a fugitive convicted cop killer in front of City Hall.
City Attorney Molly Stump told the newspaper that the city has not been served with the lawsuit.
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