Two white Baton Rouge, Louisiana, police narcotics investigators wore blackface in 1993 in an undercover operation to sell fake crack cocaine in predominantly black neighborhoods, the police department has acknowledged.
Local media outlet the Rouge Collection recently surfaced a Baton Rouge Police Department yearbook picture featuring two officers with their skin painted black, wearing flannels, hoodies and sunglasses. The photo is captioned “Soul brothers.”
The Rouge Collection identified one of the officers as Lt. Don Stone, who is still on the force. The other, according to The Advocate, is now-retired Capt. Frankie Caruso.
The two officers were part of an undercover narcotics operation with five other Baton Rouge cops, according to a 1993 article in The Advocate. The outlet reported at the time that the undercover cops used “chopped-up welder’s chalk” as fake crack cocaine and went into “drug ‘hot spots,’” which were predominantly black neighborhoods, to fool people into buying drugs.
The operation led to 10 arrests of people who attempted to buy the fake drugs from the officers in blackface, according to the article. It said one man in his 50s offered to pay for the phony dope with food stamps.
There were only two black narcotics officers on the police force in 1993, and they were “well known” in the targeted area, The Advocate reported at the time.
Baton Rouge Police Chief Murphy Paul confirmed in a Monday statement that the photo was from a “department-approved operation.”
“Blackface photographs are inappropriate and offensive. They were inappropriate then and are inappropriate today,” Paul said. “The Baton Rouge Police Department would like to apologize to our citizens and to anyone who may have been offended by the photographs.”
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