Two members of a small Florida police force have been accused of being members of the Klu Klux Klan, leading to the firing of one officer and resignation of a deputy chief.
An investigative report linked Fruitland Park officers George Hunnewell and deputy chief David Borst with the hate society, the Associated Press reported. Hunnewell was fired and Borst resigned from the 13-member department, although he denies ties with the KKK. Officer James Elkins resigned from the same department in 2010 after his Klan ties were brought into the public eye. Many local residents are shocked this type of hate is still occurring in their community.
"Maybe I'm ignorant, but I didn't realize that they still met and organized and did that kind of thing," Michele Lange, a church volunteer, told the Associated Press.
Violence against blacks was once prevalent in the rural region, which is about 50 miles northwest of Orlando. The community of less than 5,000 residents is now only about 10 percent black. The Klan was at its peak in the 1920s when it had a membership of about four million people (including U.S. senators), bit that number has since dropped to around 5,000 members across the nation.
"It's exceedingly unusual these days to find a police officer who is secretly a Klansman," Mark Potok, a senior fellow at the Southern Poverty Law Center, told the Associated Press.
Mayor Chris Bell said he had heard about a Klan rally two years before his arrival in the 1970s, but had never actually witnessed this type of activity. Despite this, Fruitland Park has been suspicious of alleged KKK ties within the police department since 2010. Last week the Florida Department of Law Enforcement sent the police chief a report linking the two officers to the Klan using FBI information.
Ann Hunnewell, the ex-wife of George Hunnewell, claimed former Police Chief J.M. Isom asked the then couple to join the KKK back in 2008. Current Police Chief Terry Isaacs said he took a sworn oath from Isom stating there was no truth to this claim.
Local racism that took place in the 1940s and 1950s were recounted in the 2012 book "Devil in the Grove." The book talks about Lake County Sheriff Willis McCall, who shot two black men that were part of a group known as the "Groveland Four." These men had been charged with raping a white woman.
"Things have improved, of course," Sannye Jones, a local NAACP official who moved to Lake County in the 1960s, told the Associated Press. "But racism still exists, just not in the same way. People are not as open and not as blatant."
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