HAMILTON, Ga. (WRBL) – The City of Hamilton’s Chief of Police resigned on the evening of Jan. 25, 2021, and another officer has been terminated following body cam footage that shows the two using racial slurs.

The Hamilton City Council asked for the resignation of Chief Gene Allmond and Sgt. John Brooks on Jan. 25 after they discovered an inappropriate bodycam video of them recorded hours before a Black Lives Matter March in Hamilton in June 2020.

A part time city employee was checking if the body camera was functional on Jan. 25. He found the footage and brought it to the attention of the Mayor’s Assistant, Buddy Walker, who then called in Mayor Julie Brown, the City Council, and City Attorney Ron Iddins.

The video is about 6 minutes long and shows the two are unaware speaking about the Black Lives Matter March that took place later in the day, the shooting of Chris Bridges in Atlanta, and more.

The two policemen use racial slurs, and if you watch the footage, you’ll see them discussing slavery and speaking negatively about the Black population.

“I don’t own no slaves…” said one of the two officers talking on the body camera footage. “Now we give them food and they don’t want to work.”

According to Walker, nobody on the Council was able to watch the full video due to “how ugly it gets.”

“After reviewing the footage, I think it speaks for itself. The city, it’s failure to take action at that point and time would have been inexplicable,” said Iddins. “It had to be done.”

Reaction from Mayor Brown was similar in sentiment.

“We wanted them off the force because we don’t want that kind of ugliness here in Hamilton,” said Brown. “Race, I don’t think has been an issue here. At least it hasn’t been in the 37 years I’ve been here, and we just didn’t want that, especially now in this day and age we want more unity. The whole country needs more unity, we need to heal, so we didn’t want anything stopping that.”

Transcript of the video, coarse language has been redacted/modified for our viewing audience, the video is taken from Sgt. Brooks’ body camera:

Brooks 00:15 – “There’s another one over here.”
Brooks 00:20 – “You want the uh….”
Brooks 01:02 – “Oh you got it, okay.”
Brooks 01:08 – “Well, I’ve been thinking about that [coughs] and we gotta be real damn careful because what I did as I turned the power on…flip it over…then I turned it all the way so that it’s all the way on but you gotta manually do it because if you put it on the other one it’s voice activated and the minute you say something it’ll start. It probably won’t fuckin’ work no way but [coughs] somebody starts to climb up there and can’t, neither me nor you, climb up there to get ’em down, and if they’re climbin’ up there and you f*****’ taze ’em, and they fall off and hit their head, and kill themselves, then you know, we’re f*****.”
Brooks 02:02 – “So I mean, I don’t know what you do. If you have the damn fire truck and hosed ’em off and they fell and hit their head they’d do the same thing…”
Brooks 02:12 – “But then you know if they get up there and the thing falls over on them and kills them somebody be sayin’ ‘well why didn’t you get them down?'”
Brooks 02:26 – “Did you see anybody on the [unclear] when you…?”
Allmond 02:28 – “No.”
Allmond 02:29 – “Well…”
Allmond 02:30 – “Seemed to me like nobody showed up.”
Brooks 02:33 – “Hell yeah…Well let me tell ya, I’ve seen two videos and I heard…you know who [unclear] is? He’s on Fox News all the time…he…”
Allmond 02:46 – “Oh! Oh Yeah!”
Brooks 02:47 – “He used to be Secret Service? He said ‘you know the…what they’re saying now is well you didn’t have to shoot ’em, it’s just a tazer,’ then how come when you taze a f****** n***** it’s like you done killed him 27 times? The guy’s running, he’s got the tazer in his hand, and you see him and he turns, and you see him fire the tazer at the officer?”
Allmond 03:11 – “But what would you have done if it had hit the officer? Go over there and get his gun and kill him?”
Brooks 03:14 – “Yeah. Yes.”
Allmond 03:15 – “Or…?”
Brooks 03:17 – “What if one of them projectiles woulda struck him in the eye? The act of him firing that tazer at an officer is an aggravated assault because he has not been trained in the proper use…An officer…if I go to taze somebody, I know to shoot low, I know what to do. He doesn’t know.”
Allmond 03:34 – “That’s exactly right… [unclear]”
Brooks 03:36 – “And that Mayor up there? Uh…she’s already fired the officer. And um without a hearing, and she’s pushing real hard. They say she’s now the front runner to be Joe Biden’s vice presidential candidate.”
Allmond 04:01 – “You’re kiddin’!”
Brooks 04:04 – “Because…if I had to f*** a n*****, I’d rather fuck the Mayor than Stacey Abrams.
Allmond 04:12 – [over static coming from radio] “Yes sir”
Dispatch 04:13 – [from radio] (unclear call sign) “…to Hamilton”
Brooks 04:15 – “Hamilton go ahead.”
Dispatch 04:16 – “…[unclear]…7996 Highway 116, 7996 Highway 116. It’s gonna be a…a 21-year-old male talking out of his [unclear] he also has a gun…”
Allmond 04:39 – “He has a what?”
Brooks 04:40 – “A gun.”
Dispatch 04:42 – [unclear]
Allmond 04:43 – “Where’s that at?”
Brooks 04:45 – “7996? That ain’t in Hamilton.”
Allmond 04:49 – “No”
Brooks 04:54 – “Cuz Roberts is 13, well you’re, uh, no, that ain’t in Hamilton. [coughs]…Hamilton 2 dispatch…”
HamiltonPD 05:06 [radio in hand] “Hamilton 2”
Brooks 05:11 – “We’ll be en route if you need us but I don’t believe the 7900 block is going to be in the city.”
[static]
Brooks 05:21 – “It’s a Hamilton mailing address.”
Dispatch 05:25 – “32 and 27…y’all still in Hamilton?”
Brooks 05:29 – “Yeah…but they don’t check…”
Dispatch 05:34 – “21 [unclear] male…from earlier, possibly [talked over by A]”
Brooks 05:39 – “If they would have went out there earlier then they know it ain’t ours.
Dispatch 05:43 – “…116…he’s got a gun…[unclear]…just talking out of his head…”

Allmond 06:13 – [on the phone] “Hey sweetie, this is HAmilton 1, I’m 10-8. We’re probably going to be tied up with that protest that’s supposed to start in a few minutes. Just thought I’d let you know. Okay? Thank you. Bye.” Brooks 06:38 – “Man if we get there and there’s nothing to it, just, you know, some little bullshit call, I mean hell yeah we can answer it but we, you know we can’t…”
Allmond 06:43 – We can’t get nothing that’s going to tie us up…”
Brooks 06:44 – “Hell no.”
Allmond 06:49 – “Fuck…Protests, son of a bitch what is the matter with these fucking people? I don’t own no slaves. My folks didn’t own no slaves…”
Brooks 07:01 – “Hey…hey…”
Allmond 07:03 – “You know what are we talking about…? 200 fucking years ago?”
Brooks 07:06 – “Hey, I’ve been doing uh…I do a lot of stuff on my family history on My Ancestry…and you know we’re all from up north, but there was a small branch of the family that lived in Virginia, which before the Civil War, what is West Virginia, was Virginia. And I did find evidence of some slave ownin’ part of my family. Even though we’re from Ohio and didn’t–nobody up there. But I’ll tell ya, looking at Chris’s family? Holy shit! Man let me tell you what…”
Allmond – [laughing]
Brooks 07:47 – She had a, one relateive I can’t remember his name, he was, fought in the Civil War, after the Civil War was over with, he became an overseer at a plantation, he was in charge of all the slaves, and there was some article or something about something he did and the paper and the newspaper said that whatever his name was he was known to be the meanest man alive.”
Allmond 08:23 – “Well you know what now? This, I don’t know if this has any merit, back in the slave times, but there was a lot them mistreated. I don’t have any doubt about that. But for the most part, it seems to me like, they furnished them a house to live in, they furnished ’em clothes to put on their back, they furnished ’em food to put on their table, and all they had to do was fuckin’ work.”
Brooks 08:50 – “And now, we give them all those things and they don’t have to work.”
Allmond 08:54 – “That’s it!”
Allmond 09:02 – “I don’t know man…I don’t know what someone’s…[unclear]…see where I hit my other deer?”
Brooks 09:10 – “Yeah…”
Allmond 09:13 – “I’m surprised that damn thing [unclear] and went up that far.”
Brooks 09:18 – “I had Chris bring me because I didn’t wanna leave my truck out here in case somebody figures…”
Allmond 09:38 – “Aw man…”
Brooks 09:43 – “It would just shickle me titless if just nobody showed up at all. Or two or three of them. Course, I don’t know, two or three of them could…”
Allmond 09:53 – “Well I told you what Richard saw on the Facebook…he said he couldn’t find it again.”
Allmond 10:08 – “Well I’ma ride around up there and see if anybody’s still [unclear] [Brooks coughs]”
Brooks 10:12 – “Yeah, I’ll get my truck out and do the same…I mean if they’re supposed to kick off at 11:30, you’d figure they’d start filtering in. ‘Course, it’s supposed to be over with at 3:30 so probably none of ’em bother to show up ’til about a quarter after 3:00.”
Allmond 10:32 – “More than likely.”
[Brooks gets into vehicle and drives out, radio plays in the truck in the background as Brooks drives through Hamilton from Police Precinct/Department, video shows him waving to unseen people/drivers as he stops at stop signs and traffic lights]
Brooks 14:05 – [to unseen person] “Excuse me sir, you can’t stand there.”
Unseen individual 14:08 – “Which sir you talkin’ to?”
Brooks 14:09 – “Him…” [presumably another individual off-camera]
Unseen individual(s) laugh 14:11 – …[unclear]…sir?
Brooks 14:15 – “You know I ain’t gonna bother you!”
Unseen individual – “No sir!”
Other individual 14:22 – “I was gonna say you don’t talk to me that way…”
Brooks 14:18 – “Hey, are these fellas here protestin’ the protesters?”
Radio 14:27 – “…jeep wrangler…” [Brooks motions beyond camera view through windshield]
Brooks 14:34 – “Radio’s making a lot of noise…”
Unseen individual, seen after in baseball hat and sunglasses 14:35 – “[unclear]…the protesters start pickin’ up bricks [unclear]…”
Brooks 14:41 – “Well, we had, Ricky said he saw on Facebook that they’d made mention about tearing down that statue on the square…”
Baseball hat 14:49 – “Yeah, well that’s why these guys are here…[unclear]…”
Brooks 14:53 – “And we’re glad to see ’em…”
Baseball hat 14:58 – “See ya brother.”
Brooks 14:58 – “Alright man…”
Baseball hat 15:01 – “Yes sir.”
Brooks 15:06 – “Hey. [to unknowns] ‘preciate y’all being here. Appreciate y’all being here.”
Unknown 15:11 – “Thank you, sir. Have a great day.”
Brooks 15:14 – “‘preciate it.” [Brooks continues, drives away, stops again at another intersection]
Someone off camera 16:07 – “…don’t have Julie’s phone number do ya?”
Brooks 16:08 – “Yes. Did you see the folks with the truck? With the flag on it? Are armed…”
Someone off camera 16:19 – “Yeah.”
Brooks 16:20 – “And they are there to make sure that the protesters don’t get out of hand. Uh, saw one of my lodge brothers…and I just rolled down the window and I told ’em, I said ‘we’re glad to see y’all here.’ K, Julie’s number is 706-570-1585.”
Someone off camera 16:53 – “…1585.”
Brooks 16:53 – “Yup.”
Someone off camera 16:54 – “Okay buddy…”
Brooks 16:55 – “Alright.” [drives away]
Brooks 17:12 – [struggling with phone and charger cord] “Come on…” [drives more]
Kristina on phone 18:32 – “…hon?”
Brooks 18:34 – “As of now, there are no protesters…”
Kristina on phone 18:39 – “What do you mean?”
Brooks 18:41 – “There are no protesters. There are people there who are there to protest the protesters and keep the protesters in line, and they’re all white people. And they look to be a bunch of rednecks, and they all got guns on.”
Kristina on phone 18:59 – “Oh boy.”
Brooks 19:00 – “So, uh, I saw Mitch, Pilkington, uh my lodge brother. And I said uh, ‘are they here to protest the protesters?’ He said ‘No, they’re here to make sure that they don’t get out of hand.’ So, I’m guessing that if they start trying to tear somethin’ down, that the white folks with the guns will step in and you know what? I’ll just let them take care of it and if I have to arrest somebody for going too far, I’ll do it.”
Kristina on phone 19:31 – “Well, like I said, maybe they all decided to go to Atlanta instead.”
Brooks 19:34 – “Well, you know Gene said, he said ‘What we gon’ do if we, if they start trying to climb up on that statue?’ I said ‘Gene, I don’t know what we can do.’ I said ‘You and I can’t climb up there and get ’em down.’ I said ‘If you taze ’em and they fall and hit their head and die, then we’ll we’ll you know, we’ll be charged.’ I said I guess we can just, you know, let ’em get up there and when they come down, arrest ’em. He said ‘Well, you’re right.’ I said ‘We can’t, we can’t climb up there and get ’em.’ And we can’t do any, you know if they’re from a height, you can’t use a tazer because like I said if they fall and hit their head…then we’re liable for that ‘cuz we’ve been trained. You know, height, you don’t shoot somebody that high if they can fall because they’re incapacitated. With a tazer. So I just told him, I said I don’t think there’s a whole lot…and then! We’re standing there and 911 calls and gives us a crazy man with a gun call five miles outside of Hamilton. And I just told ’em, I said ‘if you need us to respond, we’ll respond but that is not in the city.’ So then when they dispatched it to the Sheriff’s Department, they said, ‘yeah that guy you went out on earlier, he’s got a gun now’ and I thought ‘you know what? You knew it wasn’t in the city of Hamilton when you gave it out the first time.”
Kristina on phone 21:18 – “Mhmm.”
Brooks 21:20 – “So Gene called them on the phone and he said ‘We ain’t answerin’ calls, we’re here to deal with the protest. So don’t bother me…So, but I’ll let you know if there’s a change but right now I don’t see anybody protestin’. There’s probably less than, I don’t know, 10 or 12 of the other folks.”
Kristina on phone 21:50 – “Yeah, but they could show up later. Like at the church or…”
Brooks 21:54 – “Yeah, they could…”
Kristina on phone 21:56 – “Because they rented a four block space of time, right?”
Brooks 21:59 – “Correct.”
Kristina on phone 22:00 – “Four hours.”
Brooks 22:00 – “Yeah.”
Kristina on phone 22:02 – “So anything could happen…so if they decided to go to Atlanta or they’re coming later.”
Brooks 22:12 – “I told Gene, I said they…they got it until 3:30, I said hell, probably won’t none of ’em show up ’til about a quarter after 3:00…”
Kristina on phone 22:31 – “Well, just be careful.”
Brooks 22:35 – “I will, but as of right now it’s all quiet…”
Kristina on phone 22:39 – “Okay.”
Brooks 22:39 – “We got our body cams on, I don’t know whether they will work or not, but [coughs] if nothing else, it’ll give ’em something to think about.”
Kristina on phone 22:53 – “I don’t think they care.”
Brooks 22:55 – [coughs] “Probably not…alright well any more changes and I’ll fill you. Alright baby, bye.”
Kristina on phone 23:06 – “Bye.”
[driving, radio still playing]
Brooks 25:21 – [leaves vehicle, groans]
Unnamed 25:40 – “…go and get you something to eat…”
Brooks 25:41 – “I, I ate before I came…”
Unnamed 25:46 – “Well I should’ve. I got up early and drove back from Cordele this morning, I ain’t stopped to get nothin’ to eat [unclear in background]…”
Unnamed #2 25:50 – “…should go get you somethin’ to eat…sugar lump…drank you a Gatorade…”
Brooks 25:59 – “I had a Denver omelette.”
Unnamed 26:01 – “Mmmm. That woulda been good.”
Unnamed woman 26:04 – “That sounds yummy.”
Unnamed 26:08 – “…was kinda worried during the night someone might drive a vehicle up there, throw a chain around there…”
Brooks 26:14 – “We had…I mean, have y’all been keeping up with anything? Y’all heard anything? ‘Cuz, y’all know Ricky Hood? Ricky? Ricky said that he saw a lady’s Facebook page, the one that applied for the permit? That uh, that they had made some kind of comments about the statue and when they read it out in Council the other day they applied for the permit in order to protest racism in America, and I thought, ‘…okay…’ So, I don’t know…”
Unnamed #3 26:53 – “There’s no racism here in Hamilton. We all get along.”
Brooks 26:55 – “Well, they also said that…and Ricky went back to, he shoulda screen shotted it, that’s what he shoulda done, he said that they went, that she went on there and said, it’s understanding that the lady who applied for the permit don’t even live in Pine Mountain. Don’t know where she’s from. It’s supposed to be outsiders. And also said that she, um, God, lost my damn train of thought…”
Unnamed  27:27 – “Well there’s nothing about pulling the statue down, nothing like that on…”
Brooks 27:31 – “No…somethin’ else.”
Unnamed 27:36 – “I know this was all over the Atlanta BLM page, had a buddy of mine told me about it yesterday. Thank God we don’t have a Wendy’s.”
Brooks 27:46 – “But you know, like you said, we don’t have a problem up here. And, uh, it’s it’s it’s, it’s the out…”
Unnamed 27:53 – “Outsiders.”
Brooks 27:53 – “Exactly.”
Unnamed 27:55 – “Black or white.”
Brooks 27:55 – “Exactly. Oh, that’s what it was. They said that the reason she did not apply for a permit in Pine Mountain was because the Pine Mountain Police Department was a little bit too aggressive.”
Unnamed 28:08 – “Oh well that should make you feel a little bit better, huh?”
Brooks 28:10 – “Well…”
Unnamed 28:14 – “Well, she wasn’t all totally wrong on that statement but…”
Brooks 28:19 – “No…but I get the point.”
Unnamed 28:23 – “Peaceful protest ain’t that just a wonderful thing, that’s the thing, if you keep it peaceful, then ain’t nobody gonna bother nobody.”
Unnamed #2 28:30 – “Don’t bust no glasses, don’t go in Circle K and steal everything…”
Unnamed 28:36 – “Just let it be peaceful…one of ’em’s on a boat with a fishing pole on my [unclear].”
[unclear chatter]
Unnamed #2 28:47 – “Hopefully it stays this way…I think it will.”
Brooks 28:49 – “Well, I tell, you know it’s supposed to kick off in about three minutes, I, you know…”
Unnamed 28:57 – “I’ll be incognito. Around amongst the crowd so…well, it’s going to be interesting to see what the local news runs their little three minute section about…with what they put…”
Brooks 29:11 – “No, oh lord, it’ll…”
Unnamed 29:17 – “Now, I understand they got another one tonight at 7:00.”
Brooks 29:19 – “But that…the uh, wait a minute. The old King’s Pasture Church is doing some kind of a prayer thing here so I…”
Unnamed #3 29:26 – “That’s not here, in the square though, right?”
Brooks 29:30 – “I thought it was! Yeah.”
[group chatters]
Brooks 29:38 – “7:00 to 8:00, but I don’t, I don’t see that…”
Unnamed 29:43 – “…around noon…well we need all the prayer we can get in this country…”
Brooks 29:46 – “Absolutely!”
Unnamed 29:49 – “I agree with that.”
Brooks 29:50 – “Absolutely.”
Unnamed 29:51 – “I’ll go up there and pray with any of ’em.”
Unnamed #4 29:53 – “…[unclear]…I was startin’…[unclear]…more attention to Revelations…whaddya think?”
Unnamed #3 29:57 – “Amen, cuz it’s comin’ whether they like it or not.”
Brooks 30:01 – “Well, I think you just askin’ for trouble if you got people that wanna protest the police and then you gotta send the people that they’re protestin’ to where they are to watch what they’re doin’. I mean that’s kind of a no win. Y’all see both of the videos of that thing that happened in Atlanta yesterday? He fired that tazer at that officer.”
Unnamed #3 30:25 – “…[unclear]…Oh well I…[unclear]…”
Brooks 30:26 – “He did!”
Unnamed 30:27 – “Point blank, yes he did.”
Unnamed #2 30:29 – “I’m saying…absolutely. Cuz you don’t know how you felt. You don’t know how he smelled, you know you weren’t…”
Brooks 30:35 – “Hey, how are you?”
Unnamed #2 30:38 – “You know what I mean? Justifiably. I don’t, it’s [unclear]…”
Unnamed 30:43 – “You see what happened in Tampa Friday? There was a group of 200 African American gathered out in a parking lot and they thought they was gonna protest…well all of a sudden they just decided they was gonna rush the Walmart. And they just rushed in, stole everything they could get their hands on, nobody stopped them and out the door they went with TVs and everything else…”
Unnamed #4 31:04 – “Imagine that.”
Unnamed 31:05 – “And all the Walmart people just got down and I don’t even know if they called 911.”
Unnamed #2 31:12 – “I thought that was against the law, isn’t it?”
[group laughs]
Unnamed 31:14 – “So if I decided to just go over there and take what I want from the Circle K, would you not arrest me?”
[unclear] 31:20 – “Certainly.”
Brooks 31:22 – “I don’t know, it depends on, if you were running out and you had two 12-packs of beer and you were ‘Here take one’ ya know, I might uh, okay uh, ‘not my brand go back in there…”
Unnamed 31:32 – “That’d be you.”