The Los Angeles Police Department is investigating a charity golf event hosted by a former LAPD officer, since a recording of a performer singing a racist and offensive song about Michael Brown at the event surfaced.
Back on Tuesday, TMZ posted the disturbing video from the Glendale, California Elks Lodge, where retired LAPD officer Joe Myers hosted the event a week ago. In the video, performer Gary Fishell can be clearly heard singing a parody of “Bad, Bad Leroy Brown,” with the lyrics replaced by racist comments about Brown, the unarmed teen killed by a white police officer this past summer in Ferguson, Missouri.
“Michael Brown learned a lesson about a messin'/With a badass policeman,” Fishell sings, according to TMZ. “And he's bad, bad Michael Brown/Baddest thug in the whole damn town/Badder than old King Kong/Meaner than a junkyard dog.”
TMZ reports that 50 to 60 people attended the dinner, with half of the crowd made up of mostly retired police. The site spoke with Fishell’s lawyer, who admits that the private investigator realizes that the song was “off color and in poor taste,” but thought the police would find it funny.
“How can I dictate what he [Fishell] says in a song?" Myers goes on, "This is America. We can say what we want. This is a free America,” Myers told TMZ.
A lodge trustee told the site that they do not endorse that kind of racism and did not host the event themselves. Since Myers is a member, he had the right to host the event there.
According to CBS Los Angeles, LAPD Chief Charlie Beck has tweeted that he is aware of the video and found it “offensive & absurd.” The Professional Standards Bureau will investigate the incident.