Re: https://www.vice.com/en_us/article/dyz7yz/cops-getting-fired-for-racist-social-media-posts

x-no-archive: yes

On 6/12/2020 8:29 PM, Sir Gaygory's Owner's Owner 🐶笛 wrote:
> 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.
> 
> "nads" won't comment on this poast...

All cops are bad, so we need more dead cops.  Simple.