Stress is on a Pennsylvania group to sever all ties with a former assistant police chief and fencing contractor after he was charged for a racist verbal assault.
State Senator Anthony H. Williams, who represents elements of Philadelphia and Delaware counties, joined the Delaware County Black Caucus and different group leaders at a press convention Thursday demanding the cancellation of any authorities contracts with J & P Fencing, which 46-year-old John P. Romano as soon as owned and should.
Romano, of Delaware County, faces legal costs, together with ethnic intimidation, terroristic threats, harassment, disorderly conduct, and obstructing highways after the Nov. 21 confrontation with an unnamed Black lady.
In keeping with the legal grievance, he was loading bushes onto his forklift whereas blocking site visitors on a neighborhood highway. The lady, caught in site visitors brought on by Romano, admitted rising impatient and honking her horn on the forklift.
Romano, who’s white, allegedly responded, “Who the f*** are you beeping at? Shut up b****.”
The lady mentioned she then tried to drive her automobile across the forklift. By then, based on investigators, Romano had jumped out of the forklift to confront the lady at floor stage, calling her a “monkey” whereas saying he would discover out the place she lived and the place she was from.
Romano continued with the verbal assault, allegedly telling the lady, “You already know what n*****, go get a f****** banana. I’m not coping with you at present, plain and easy.”
The lady mentioned Romano took an image of her license plate and claimed he had the ability to have her automobile towed. Romano threatened to turn into bodily, based on the grievance, repeatedly calling her a “porch monkey.” And he scoffed on the suggestion she could contact regulation enforcement, the lady claimed, telling her he was “protected.”
The lady did name the police. Romano, recorded on physique digital camera video, admitted to calling her the N-word after which informed one of many officers, “I’ll inform ya what I mentioned, I’ll say it once more, it’s my perception, they’re all animals. I’m bored with coping with them.”
When the officer informed Romano concerning the attainable repercussions he may face, Romano allegedly replied, “So I can’t name a n***** a n*****?”
Romano, police mentioned, claimed the lady had threatened to kill him. He then retracted his earlier assertion about him calling her a racial slur, based on investigators.
“I didn’t name her a n*****,” Romano then informed the officer, based on the legal grievance. “I mentioned, ‘Go get a banana, you monkey.’ That’s what I mentioned. So, how’s that racist? She is a wild animal.”
Darby Township Police Chief Mike Sousa mentioned the officers on the scene have been “shocked as a lot as I used to be.”
“It was fairly lower and dry and that straightforward,” Sousa mentioned.
Romano, a former Sharon Hill Assistant Fireplace Chief, has been suspended by the hearth firm’s board of trustees and the borough has additionally severed ties, mentioned Sharon Hill Council President Tanya Allen.
Sen. Williams desires to be sure that extends to J & P Fencing. A consultant for the corporate informed NBC10 in Philadelphia that Romano offered the enterprise years in the past and hasn’t labored there in seven months. A lawyer for the corporate informed the station Romano had simply been employed to do work for that someday, reiterating he’s now not the proprietor.
Nonetheless, a LinkedIn web page nonetheless lists Romano because the proprietor of J & P Fencing. And he was responding on behalf of the corporate to Higher Enterprise Bureau complaints as just lately as 2023.
Romano is due in court docket in February.
