The Plainfield Board of Police Commissioners on Thursday reinstated an Indiana female police captain who was placed on paid administrative leave after telling a fellow captain he benefited from "white male privilege" during a training seminar in early November. The male captain became heated and yelled during the exchange.
But a letter of reprimand of the board issued to Capt. Carri Weber will be kept in her permanent file, a spokesperson for Plainfield, Indiana, said in a statement to The Washington Post.
Capt. Scott Arndt, the male officer, was also suspended for two days without pay after the incident for "conduct unbecoming a Plainfield Police officer," the statement said. He served his suspension on Nov. 27 and 28, deputy town manager Tony Perona told The Post.
The suspension of Weber provoked national attention in part because of the reason for Weber's suspension and because it appeared at the time that the male officer had not been disciplined, a fact not reported by local media, on which The Post and other national news outlets based their stories.
It's not clear whether the town had at that time made public the disciplinary action against the male officer.
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The original incident occurred at a Nov. 1 training seminar on police interaction with transgender members of the community, led by a U.S. Department of Justice representative and a U.S. attorney.
During the seminar, Arndt questioned the statistic that members of the transgender community are 3.32 times as likely to be victims of police violence than non-transgender people, according to WRTV.
"My wife has never been part of police violence. Most of the people that I know have never been accused the police of violence. So I guess I don't get where that statistic comes from," Arndt can be heard saying in a video of the event.
"'Cause your white male privilege, so you wouldn't know," Weber responded.
She repeated "your white male privilege," after Arndt questioned her.
Arndt quickly raised his voice to a scream.
"Are you serious? I find that extremely offensive," he yelled.
The video also showed Arndt standing up and angrily gesturing at someone who appears to be one of the seminar's leaders.
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On Nov. 10, Arndt filed a complaint claiming he was "racially and sexistly slurred" by Weber. She was placed on paid administrative leave on Nov. 16, "regarding not only this incident but her disciplinary history in the last six months," a town spokesperson said in a statement to The Post.
She was previously suspended in August for driving her squad car within eight hours of drinking alcohol and for having alcohol in her squad car, according to WISH.
Story by Travis M. Andrews. Andrews is a reporter for The Washington Post's Morning Mix. Previously he was an editor for Southern Living and a pop culture and tech contributor for Mashable.
