Columbia cop fired for racial slur is an ex-Gamecock. Here’s what an ex-teammate said
Preston Thorne and Chad Walker used to be football teammates.
They gave their sweat on the practice fields and in front of more than 80,000 fans at Williams-Brice Stadium in the early 2000s.
Thorne, a defensive lineman, and Walker, an offensive lineman, battled each other at practice nearly every day, Thorne said.
“We bled, we fought, cramped, and cried together,” Thorne wrote in a letter to The State.
But the camaraderie that lingers when football ends took a severe blow after Thorne saw the video of Walker using a racial slur while on patrol as a Columbia police officer.
Thorne spoke with The State in an interview after sending his letter.
Thorne, a Black man and student success coach at USC, said the best description for how he felt after seeing the video of Walker is “disappointed.” He said the Chad Walker in the video behaved differently as a teammate.
But Thorne is all too familiar with the actions of “Sergeant Walker,” he said in his letter.
”It made me think of all the ‘Officer Walkers’ that I have encountered,” Thorne wrote. “The ‘Sergeant Walker’ that pulled me out a car and searched me when I was just 8 years old. The ‘Sergeant Walker’ that stuck a billy club in my back and kicked me out of a varsity football game when I was in middle school. That same officer would later profusely congratulate me on signing with his Gamecocks.”
Thorne tries to not watch the all-too-frequent videos of Black people unfairly treated or killed by police. But this video had a name attached to it that he recognized. He didn’t want it to be his former teammate.
Unfortunately it was, Thorne said.
“You see someone you know personally and they’re acting this way, it’s disappointing,” Thorne said.
Walker, a white man, worked for the Columbia Police Department for 14 years until Monday, when Chief Skip Holbrook fired him. His firing resulted from a heated confrontation with people at the Five Points establishment, Bar None. In a video, Walker can be seen escalating a verbal confrontation and saying “n----r” after he said someone called him the word.
In his letter, Thorne called the slur the “most disgusting vile word” in English.
Such use of the racial slur would never have been acceptable when he and Walker were teammates in the Gamecocks’ locker room, which included many young, Black men. Walker knows that, Thorne said, and it made him wonder about the character of the team Walker had been on the last 14 years.
Thorne wanted to believe that the racial inequity he saw with police were just bad cops. But then he saw the video from Saturday night with someone he knew personally practicing that inequity. And that lent perspective to systemic problems in police culture.
Thorne asked himself whether Walker had teammates in the police department in the last decade who let him know that saying a racial slur, no matter the context, was unacceptable.
Former Gamecock teammates exchanged similar questions in a group text with Thorne. The reactions of his fellow teammates were wide-ranging.
Some were shocked. Others saddened. Some said Walker didn’t weaponize the word, so it wasn’t a foul. Thorne countered by saying Walker surely knew that specific racial slur is offensive no matter when or why it’s said.
“The intent of the word has been used to dehumanize Black people,” Thorne said.
The word shouldn’t be thrown around.
But that’s what he saw Walker doing, antagonizing people he was supposed to protect and serve and escalating a situation when police are supposed to deescalate encounters to avoid terrible endings. Thorne saw Walker treating people like the ex-cop wouldn’t have ever treated his football teammates.
The reaction of former Gamecocks that gave Thorne the most pause was resignation.
Instead of being disappointed, they expected things like this to happen.
If Thorne was to see Walker again, he’d remind him about those times they rallied and found a way to be football teammates despite differences in race and upbringing and perspective. And then he’d ask, “Do you think about us when you’re out on the streets?”
And he’d tell Walker the way he treated his teammates is the same way he should treat people on the streets.
“There’s acceptance you give to other folks,” Thorne would say to Walker.
This story was originally published September 3, 2020 at 1:34 PM.