In Wilmington, North Carolina, three veteran police officers have been fired for misconduct after accidentally recording themselves talking about killing Black residents. One officer said, “We are just going to go out and start slaughtering” them — using the N-word to describe Black people. He went on to say, “I can’t wait. God, I can’t wait.” The same officer said he felt society needed a civil war to “wipe them off the f—ing map.” The department learned about the comments after the officers accidentally recorded their own phone conversations in a patrol car. The firings were announced by the city’s new police chief, Donny Williams, the first African American to ever hold the position. He just took the post this week.

Wilmington, North Carolina, was the scene of a violent massacre in 1898, when heavily armed white supremacists launched a coup to topple the city’s biracial government. They burned down Black businesses, including the local African American newspaper. As many as 300 African Americans were killed. A former Confederate Army officer who helped lead the coup then took over as Wilmington’s new mayor.