Posted on 06/20/2019 7:46:33 AM PDT by yesthatjallen
The Philadelphia Police Department has pulled 72 officers off their regular duties as authorities investigate inflammatory social media posts revealed in a database that found thousands of offensive postings by current and former officers, the city's police commissioner said Wednesday.
Police officials in Philadelphia are describing the action as the largest removal of officers from the street in recent memory.
"We are equally as disgusted by many of the posts that you saw and in many cases, the rest of the nation saw," said Philadelphia Police Commissioner Richard Ross.
It is the latest fallout since the advocacy group The Plain View Project earlier this month released thousands of Facebook posts and comments by current and former police officers that range from racist memes, to posts celebrating violence and messages containing Islamophobic themes, among other offensive material.
Since the data dump, internal affairs officials in police departments including Phoenix, St. Louis and Dallas are probing whether the distasteful and sometimes violent material should warrant disciplinary action or terminations.
In Philadelphia, Ross said Wednesday that at least "several dozen" of the 72 officers now on desk duty will be disciplined and others will be fired, but he did not provide specifics, including any of the names of those who have been taken off their regular duties.
"We've talked about from the outset how disturbing, how disappointing and upsetting these posts are," Ross told reporters at the police department's headquarters. "They will undeniably impact police-community relations."
David Rudovsky, a longtime Philadelphia civil rights lawyer who focuses on police misconduct, called the decision to place 72 officers on desk duty "significant," saying the social media posts appear to show conduct that is inconsistent with the department's promise of fair and equal treatment for all residents.
"More important will be the future decisions regarding sanctions or other measures to deal with this widespread problem in the police department," Rudovsky said.
Philadelphia criminal defense lawyer Paul Hetznecker agreed that the Facebook message scandal is a fresh reminder of an issue that has long plagued city law enforcement.
"We're all aware of it," Hetznecker said. "There's not anyone who has been connected to the criminal justice system in Philadelphia who isn't aware of the underlining problems of implicit bias and explicit bias that these posts reflect that have existed for a long, long time, for decades."
The research project tracking officers' use of social media flagged offensive material posted by about 2,900 current officers, some in supervisor roles, and posts by hundreds of former police officers across eight police departments.
ETC...
> He was gaming the very liberal and lucrative California disability system and trying to scam for an early retirement. <
Right. And that doesn’t say much about him, or the system.
> But you are ignoring human normalcy. <
In that I guess we’ll just have to agree to disagree. A professional should know when it’s important to keep his mouth shut.
Yeah - that’ll help the spiking crime rate - many more twenty-plus-shooting weekends coming up......
We don't have those guys here in Baldimore. Maybe they have something online for me to check out.
Yeah, I shouldn't be so quick to call people pussies when my own Facebook accounts are completely free from political opinions, memes, whatnot.
Not only are these officers' careers threatened but there will be defense attorneys who use these Facebook posts to try to get criminal charges and convictions dropped and to sway juries, putting the public at risk.
Or at least create an anonymous account.
Thanks for the link! I did find them yesterday and am glad for Philly that they have this resource; although it would be nice if they could dare to have Candace Owens or other rightist voices. Maybe they can hold on somewhere left of center for the time being instead of far, far left. One of their panel discussions about gentrification on YouTube contained some reasonably moderate liberals, a very educated guy and one total BLM ahole, but it was interesting to hear their several points of view. I think the gentrification debates are 90% wack no matter which city we're talking about, tho.
Does Free Republic count as Social Media ?..... Yep.
On the other hand, it appears Philly has too many civil rights lawyers and defense attorneys. Disappear those and maybe equilibrium can be attained.
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