CLEVELAND, Ohio -- A Cleveland police officer was suspended six days without pay for sending racist text messages regarding "an Arabic male" and for a separate use-of-force incident.

Cleveland Police Chief Calvin Williams also ordered officer Aaron Petitt to undergo cultural sensitivity training as part of his discipline.

Williams found Petitt, a patrolman in the city's Third District, guilty of using "disparaging remarks when referencing an Arabic male during a potential police action" in an April 27, 2017 text message from his personal phone to a now-retired Cleveland police officer.

The city has not responded to a public records request for the Internal Affairs investigation into Petitt and police and city officials have not revealed exactly what the message said.

Internal Affairs investigators uncovered the message during a separate investigation into the now-retired officer. They also found Fourth District Det. John Kraynik sent the same retired officer racist text messages regarding black football players.

Kraynik was issued a letter of re-instruction and was also ordered to undergo cultural sensitivity training.

Petitt was also disciplined for separate incidents including using excessive force in October in downtown Cleveland, even though it was avoidable. He was also disciplined for failing to cover up tattoos on his arm while on duty.

A message left with Cleveland Police Patrolmen's Association President Jeff Follmer was not immediately returned. Messages left with a city and police spokeswomen were also not immediately returned.

Follmer previously said that the union does not condone the content of the text messages, but took issue with the way Internal Affairs brought its case against the officers.

The union argued in a lawsuit that Internal Affairs could not discipline the officers based on text messages from their personal phones that were found during an unrelated investigation.

The CPPA suit said investigators found the texts through an "unlawful intrusion" into their phones and that they violated the officers' First and Fifth Amendment rights.

A federal judge ruled in the CPPA's favor in their attempt to keep the details of the text messages out of the news media. U.S. District Judge Christopher Boyko allowed both the city and the union to file information regarding the case under seal, blocking it from public viewing.

Petitt, a 33-year-old who served tours of Iraq and Afghanistan in the Army, was hired in 2007. He shot and killed a 29-year-old Cleveland man in 2009 after coming to the aid of bounty hunters. Petitt shot the man after the man stabbed him in the foot and hit him with a board.

A 2010 evaluation by a supervisor found that he suffered an "inordinate" amount of on-duty injuries, had four uses of non-deadly force cases and two deadly-use of force cases in one year, according to records in his personnel file.

Petitt resigned in 2011 to take a job with Triple Canopy, a U.S. State Department contractor that provided protective services. He said in a 2015 deposition that he worked for the company in Iraq.

He left the contractor and Cleveland welcomed him back to the police force in September 2012.

A month later, a black Sagamore Hills resident accused him of forcibly removing him from his car and slamming him on the back windshield during a traffic stop on Chester Avenue near East 79th Street. The city in September 2017 agreed to pay Reginald Folks $25,000 to resolve a lawsuit.

Petitt also was the subject of a 2013 internal investigation after he and officer John Sanderson were accused of disobeying a direct order from a sergeant and went to help an off-duty officer working downtown. He was suspended for nine days.

Petitt also has several letters in his personnel file praising his work, including one from the director of the FBI's Terrorist Screening Center in Washington, D.C. and one from the U.S. Postal Service's inspector general.

The officer has been in the news as far back as 2001. That year, while a junior at Fairview High School, he sued the city's school district because administrators suspended him for hanging posters on his locker that showed airplanes bombing Afghanistan.

Petitt claimed he was showing patriotism following the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks, and that his sister lived in New York at the time and was injured by debris from the World Trade Center's collapse.

His case received national attention. He appeared on CNN, MSNBC and Fox News and received patriotism awards from veterans' groups. The school district settled the lawsuit, paying Petitt and his family $3,000 and his lawyers $21,000.

To comment on this post, please visit our crime and courts comments section.