FORT LAUDERDALE, Fla. – A former Fort Lauderdale police officer fired over racially charged text messages testified at an arbitration hearing Friday as he tries to get his job back.
"Give me a context where you think it's OK to call someone from the city of Fort Lauderdale the N word?" Eugene Pettis, attorney for the city, asked.
"If you're referring to a person, we'll call this person a bad guy and we'll even call him a white guy. If I refer to him as that word, I don't think there's a problem with it," James Wells said.
Wells took on more tough questions as he battled to get his badge back.
"We don't have any white guys that you're referring to in this particular case, do we?" Pettis asked.
"In this particular case, no," Wells said.
Wells was fired after racist text messages linked to his cellphone where brought to the Fort Lauderdale Police Department's attention last October.
According to Chief Frank Adderley, another officer's ex-fiance brought forth a video Officer Alex Alvarez allegedly had made and said that she had seen racist text messages sent between Alvarez, Wells and two other officers.
Wells said the texts were taken out of context.
"What are you referring to?" Pettis asked.
"The worst of the criminals," Wells said. "Not a specific race, not a specific gender, but just the worst of the worst."
Wells and two other officers were fired after the internal affairs investigation concluded and Alvarez resigned.
Wells is the first to go through the arbitration process. He will learn whether he will be rehired within 30 days.