Romney: N.H. police official should resign for 'vile' Obama remark
Mitt Romney is calling on a New Hampshire police commissioner to apologize and resign for using a racial epithet in reference to President Obama.
“The vile epithet used and confirmed by the commissioner has no place in our community: He should apologize and resign,” Romney said in a statement first reported by The Boston Herald.
Robert Copeland, the police commissioner of Wolfeboro, N.H., refused to apologize and sent a statement to his fellow commissioners after a resident complained to the town manager that she overheard the slur used by Copeland.
“I believe I did use the ‘N’ word in reference to the current occupant of the White House,” Copeland, 82, wrote to his fellow commissioners last week. “For this, I do not apologize — he meets and exceeds my criteria for such.”
Romney, the 2012 GOP presidential nominee, owns a vacation home in Wolfeboro and spends every summer with his family at the New Hampshire house.
About 20 black people live in Wolfeboro, according to the Associated Press.
Copeland won a new three-year term on the Wolfeboro police commission in March. None of the town’s police officers is black or a member of an another minority group,according to CBS News. Town Manager David Owen has said he and the town’s board of selectmen cannot remove an elected official from office.
