The Region - News from Sept. 1, 1987

Glendale court commissioner Daniel F. Calabro, who used the word “nigger” in a court hearing, is not racially biased, an ad hoc committee of the Glendale Bar Assn. has concluded. Bar Assn. President Thomas L. Simpson said the three-member committee is convinced that the commissioner used the word as a description of a case before him and not as a reference to a particular person or group of people. “The conclusions we have reached are not opinions over which reasonable minds could differ,” Simpson said. Calabro used the epithet in a June court hearing involving a white man who was accused of assaulting a black man and calling him “nigger.” “Another nigger case?” Calabro asked, according to court transcripts. “Another one where this nigger business came up? We’re not past all that yet? I thought we were past all that.”