Well-known Wichita police officer one of two suspended for sending racist Floyd meme

A Black officer who is well-known in the community is one of two Wichita police officers suspended for sending a photoshopped, racist image of George Floyd as rioters took to the streets after Floyd’s death in May 2020.

Donielle Watson was suspended for 15 days and will have to undergo training with a psychologist. The white officer he sent it to, who then sent it on to other officers, was given the same punishment.

The messages were sent as people protested, sometimes violently, against police brutality across the country after Floyd, a Black man, was murdered when a white officer knelt on his neck for several minutes. The meme showed the image of a naked Black man sitting on Floyd’s head.

“It was racist and did not take into account the sense of injustice in our community at that time,” City Manager Robert Layton said about the image.

Watson was one of three officers suspended after Wichita police reopened an investigation into inappropriate text messages following an Eagle report on some of the messages and the lack of punishment in March. City officials announced the suspensions Thursday.

Watson declined to be interviewed through the department’s public information office.

The messages involved 13 Wichita officers, three Sedgwick County deputies and two Wichita firefighters who sent racist, homophobic and genocidal comments. Some officers who have shot and killed people also joked about shooting civilians.

Watson is the most well-known and identifiable officer of those who have been named. Watson, who started with the department in 2004, was named the Willard Garvey Crime Prevention Officer of the Year in 2019. He also often appears in social media videos on the department’s juvenile intervention unit that he helped create in 2020. Through his role, he often speaks in schools.

He often appears on the Wichita Police Department and Wichita Police Foundations Facebook pages. A July 7 post shows him working with children through the unit’s youth police academy; he was reading to children at Linwood Elementary School in a June 30 post; making TikTok videos with children at the Flashpoint Youth Center in a mid-June post; and posing for a photo a children at Untamed Athletes in a post a few months before that.

A October 2021 story in The Community Voice said Watson joined a gang during hard times in his youth before turning his life around. The story said he sat on several boards, including McAdams Academy and the Wichita NAACP.

Wichita NAACP president Larry Burks Sr. told an Eagle reporter that the term board member should be used loosely. Watson didn’t sit on an executive board but worked with youth through the NAACP, he said. He added that Watson stepped away from that work around the time The Eagle first reported the messages but didn’t say why.

Burks was traveling Thursday afternoon and wouldn’t comment about Watson and the meme until he had a chance to sit down and reflect on it.

He said that when he taught at Southeast High School, Watson was a good student and a standout basketball player.

“He carried himself in a very professional and upright manner,” he said. Asked how he feels now, he said: “I kind of have to step back a second and reflect and see if that is going to change my opinion of him.”

Interim Police Chief Lemuel Moore, in an April interview, touted Watson as friendly and a hard worker.

“I know when I see him interact with community members he likes to laugh and joke and have a good time with them, but at the same time take care of business … He likes to support the youth in being positive and doing positive things,” he said. “For me as a leader, I trust that if I give a job, that he is going to get it done.”

Moore added:

“I’m surprised that he and any other individual that was within the Wichita Police Department would send something like that meme.”

During a news conference Thursday, Moore announced that three officers would be suspended for eight days.

Immediately after that, Layton said he didn’t agree with Moore. He suspended the two officers who sent the Floyd meme — Watson and Sgt. Jamie Crouch — for 15 days. Afterward, they will be put on desk duty until going through training with a psychologist.

The NAACP and Wichita Ministerial League, both African-American community groups, are consulting with the city on choosing a psychologist. Burks said it’s not a conflict of interest for the NAACP to be involved in that process; the group has connections throughout the community and is helping the city find those resources.

Moore also suspended Chad Spain, who talked about beating people with a flashlight and touted the anti-government Three Percenters, for 15 days. A clinical psychologist also will determine if he is fit for duty.

Moore, who took over as interim chief March 1, has criticized the lack of punishment in the case under his predecessor, Gordon Ramsay. The only officer originally punished was one who called Ramsay a tool.

After police reopened the case following The Eagle’s March 21 story, investigators found inappropriate messages sent by two Wichita Fire Department supervisors and learned Watson had sent the racist photo.

Crouch, who served on the SWAT team, sent the photoshopped image to a Sedgwick County deputy at 2:12 a.m. on March 30, 2020. Protests in Wichita had started by then.

Moore told The Eagle on March 22 that Crouch sent the “image to lighten the situation and de-stress the SWAT team members” and that he received it from a Black friend.

Crouch was reinterviewed by police investigators a couple of days later and said the photo was sent to him by Watson, according to a news release.

This story was originally published July 22, 2022 at 4:23 AM.