Five San Francisco police officers found exchanging racist, homophobic texts - I guess now cops cannot even enjoy jokes any more....

SAN FRANCISCO (Reuters) - Five more San Francisco police officers have been found to be exchanging racist and homophobic text messages with one another, forcing a review of hundreds of criminal cases that may be compromised by their bias, the city's chief prosecutor said on Thursday.

The disclosure by District Attorney George Gascon came a year after 14 other members of the San Francisco Police Department were caught up in a similar texting scandal.

The latest inquiry surfaced amid heightened scrutiny of police encounters with members of minority groups following numerous high-profile killings of unarmed black people by police across the United States since mid-2014.

Gascon said he recommended in a letter on Wednesday to city Police Chief Gregory Suhr that the five newly implicated officers be assigned to desk duty to avoid adding to the potential caseloads tainted by personal bias exposed in their text messages.

The dozens of racist and anti-gay texts were unearthed in a review of 5,000 pages of material turned over by police in an unrelated investigation, Gascon said in a telephone interview.

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