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Temple University cop under internal investigation for allegedly making racist statements

Temple officials were responding to a video posted on TikTok showing Temple police interacting with young males riding dirt bikes.

Temple and the university’s Department of Public Safety have launched an investigation into the officer, school leaders said.
Temple and the university’s Department of Public Safety have launched an investigation into the officer, school leaders said.Read moreTom Gralish / Staff Photographer

A police officer at Temple University is under internal investigation for allegedly making a “series of reprehensible comments to several young members of the Philadelphia community on our campus,” university officials said in a statement Friday night.

John Fry, the university’s president, and Richard Sobieray, a senior vice president and chief operating officer at Temple, offered no further explanation of what the officer allegedly said except to describe the allegations as “deeply troubling.”

Fry and Sobieray said that Temple and the university’s Department of Public Safety have launched an investigation and the officer, who was not identified, has been reassigned to administrative duties pending the outcome of the probe.

Temple was responding to a video posted on TikTok this week that is more than 11 minutes long and claims that a Temple officer made racist comments to young Black males riding dirt bikes on campus. The audio is not clear, but the person recording the video claims the officer said the males “don’t know their fathers” and “couldn’t afford a car” and “aren’t real men.”

Fry and Sobieray said the comments attributed to the officer “run counter to this university’s values as well as the high standards that we hold for our Temple Police Officers.”

The university leaders said that Temple’s Department of Public Safety “takes pride in serving not just the Temple community but also the North Philadelphia community. Let us be clear, the alleged behavior is unacceptable, not just for a Temple Police Officer but for any Temple employee. Please know that we take this incident extremely seriously.”

The internal investigation will review all available evidence, including witness statements and incident reports, Fry and Sobieray said.

“We know trust between our university, our police officers and our North Philadelphia community must be earned continuously, and we intend to hold ourselves accountable to that end,” Fry and Sobieray said.