https://www.vice.com/en_us/article/dyz7yz/cops-getting-fired-for-
racist-social-media-posts
Cops Are Getting Fired Over Their Racist Social Media Posts
In the wake of George Floyd’s killing and a national uprising, police
officers are actually facing backlash for their entries into a canon of
bad online behavior from law enforcement.
By Katie Way
Jun 11 2020, 4:04pmShareTweetSnap
PHOTO BY GETTY VIA GETTY IMAGES
Protesters and their supporters aren’t the only ones who have gotten
vocal on social media in the last two weeks: Across the United States,
law enforcement officers have taken to the internet to post
denigrating, often racist content about George Floyd and the protests
catalyzed by his death (among too many others). And, in a reflection of
the recent, way-overdue push for an increase in accountability, they’re
actually getting fired for it.
On June 1, Hunter Beckwith of the Fulton, New York police department
was fired after posting a meme on her Instagram story that stated Black
people only care about Black lives when they are “killed by a white
person.” According to Oswego County News Now, Fulton Police Department
chief Craig Westbrook thanked the community for being “proactive” and
said the post “[diminished] the trust between the police and the
public.”
On June 3, Denver Police Department’s Tommy McClay was fired for
posting a photo of himself alongside two other officers in bulletproof
vests and helmets, with an on-the-nose caption to match: “Let’s start a
riot.” The department, one of the first to use tear gas and pepper
bullets on protesters, said the post was “inconsistent with the values
of the Department [sic]” in a statement on Twitter.
On June 9, Troy University in Troy, Alabama fired its chief of police,
John McCall, after alumni surfaced Facebook comments where McCall said
Floyd “ABSOLUTELY” played a role in his killing and called protesters
criminals while defending Donald Trump’s decision to deploy tear gas on
a crowd in front of St. John’s Church in Washington, D.C. on June 1.
“We are no longer confident in [McCall’s] ability to serve our
students, faculty and staff,” university chancellor Jack Hawkins Jr.
said in a statement posted to Facebook. “Our goal is to hear how
University Police [sic] can best serve our campuses and ensure that
their practices align with our values.”
Racist behavior on social media is nothing new for members of the U.S.
police force: According to a BuzzFeed News report from 2019 on the
Plain View Project, a database of public Facebook content posted by
police officers in the U.S., 1 in 5 current police officers and 2 in 5
retired police officers across the country had posted hateful material
“displaying bias, applauding violence, scoffing at due process, or
using dehumanizing language” on Facebook alone. While BuzzFeed News
reported that some departments whose officers appeared in the review
contacted the Plain View Project to learn more, it’s clear the issue
was far from resolved. It needed a catalyst like the renewed interest
in the Movement for Black Lives to bubble back to the surface.
Law enforcement isn’t the only industry that has seen seismic shifts in
tolerance of racist comments and behavior. There’s CrossFit CEO Greg
Glassman, who resigned after backlash from both a racist joke about
George Floyd on Twitter and internal remarks about Floyd’s killing. Bon
Appetit editor in chief Adam Rappaport resigned after writer Tammie
Teclamariam surfaced a photo of him in brownface, which led to an
outpouring of staff accounts of the racist environment he cultivated at
the publication. And a handful of people in leadership positions at
women’s digital media publications have issued apologies and made
leadership changes as a result of Black and brown staffers sharing
stories of discrimination via Twitter and Instagram.
All of these reckonings matter, but the one within law enforcement
carries a different weight, as the cops being disciplined and ousted
are revealed to be in direct violation of the famous edict to “serve
and protect” the general public—one that they often lean on in order to
justify their own existence.
Other law enforcement officers have faced disciplinary action for
expressing similar racist sentiments towards protesters and police
brutality victims online. Brooklyn court officer Terri Pinto
Napolitano’s Facebook posts depicting the lynching of Barack Obama
sparked calls for her termination, according to News 12. So far, she’s
been suspended for 30 days without pay and her gun has been
confiscated.
JJ Hoffman resigned from his position as fire chief in Lyons, Colorado
after he received a formal reprimand for expressing his desire to “open
up our high pressure bumper turret” and hose down protesters (a tactic
famously deployed against civil rights activists in the 60s) on a
Facebook thread.
An unnamed school resource officer in Woodburn, Oregon has been
suspended for posting content the Woodburn Police Department chief
called “troubling and disturbing” in a comment to Oregon’s KPTV.
Bert Gamin, a lieutenant with the Brevard County Sheriff’s Office in
Florida, was suspended from his position after he claimed
responsibility for posts from the Brevard County Fraternal Order of
Police’s official Facebook page. The comments invited job applications
from officers suspended for shoving 75-year-old pacifist Martin Gugino
to the ground in Buffalo, New York; officers charged with excessive
force in Atlanta, Georgia; and cops from the Minneapolis Police
Department. “We are hiring in Florida,” the post read. “We got your
back!”
Though Gamin stood by the commentary in an interview with Florida
Today, Brevard County sheriff Wayne Ivey told the publication the
comments were “extremely distasteful and insensitive to current
important and critical issues that are occurring across our country.”
Research from 2018 showed that cops are more likely to brutalize
protesters at... protests against police brutality. These events
spiritually track with that research: members of law enforcement are
reacting in a moment where the country reckons with the way our police
force upholds systemic racism in a way that confirms not only that they
are, indeed, deeply racist, but feel comfortable and safe expressing
those views among their peers. This pattern only lends more credence to
the idea that this institution is impossible to reform, rotten as it is
to its core.
Follow Katie Way on Twitter.
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