Police posts on social media can spark criticism and reveal prejudices

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Cops posts on Facebook show hostility and hate

In a Facebook group called the Pittsburgh Area Police Breakroom, many officers criticized the chiefs who knelt or the officers who marched with the Black Lives Matter protesters, whom they called “terrorists”, “racists” or “Thugs”. (March 22)

PA

As the United States continues to rely on racial injustice, police officers also face racist messages on their personal or public social media pages.

To consider:

Cambridge police officers share gifs celebrating police brutality.

Police report people of color in Providence, Rhode Island and many other cities across the country.

A spoofed image posted to the Facebook group of a public police union that depicted the mayor of Worcester with an Adolf Hitler mustache for supporting COVID-19 security protocols.

The Burlington, Vt., Police chief uses a fake Twitter account to troll a critic.

These are among the many recent examples that have resulted in high profile investigations, suspensions and resignations.

Related: The Mayor of Worcester pictured with a Hitler-style mustache on the Police Union’s Facebook page

“It goes beyond decency and it is disheartening that people think it is okay to switch off,” Worcester Mayor Joseph M. Petty said in September after a town worker said published, on a Jewish holiday, the modified photo of him on the Worcester Police Union. public Facebook page. Petty alleged that the 3,200-member page has “a long history of authorizing racist rants.”

Officers and other public officials across America have faced the consequences of using social media since the inception of the platforms. The latest batch of controversial posts raises questions about city responses and how fundamental issues, which go beyond law enforcement, can be addressed.

Can police officers be dismissed for positions or are they constitutionally protected?

Police and other government employees enjoy protections against free speech under the First Amendment, but the protections “are not absolute,” said law professor Clay Calvert.

“The First Amendment gives you the right to free speech, but it doesn’t give you the right to be employed by the government… or to keep your job,” said Calvert, project director Marion B. Brechner of the first amendment to the university. from Florida.

The United States Supreme Court has ruled – in cases such as Pickering v. Board of Education in 1968 and Connick v. Myers in 1983 – that public employees receive First Amendment protection if they speak as a private citizen on a matter of public interest.

It’s an argument made across the country in calls from fired public safety officials, including one from a Cleveland EMS captain who was fired for race-insensitive comments about Tamir Rice, a 12-year-old black boy, shot dead by Cleveland police in 2014.

More: Backlogs hurt people awaiting trial

Protections end, the Supreme Court ruled, when an individual’s speech undermines the operations and credibility of the government agency that employs them. This balancing test, Clay said, is applied to police officers when racist and political speech could be interpreted as a sign that they are biased against groups of people they are charged with protecting and serving.

Providence officials expressed these concerns in 2015 as they investigated two police sergeants for racist comments. Patrol Sgt. David W. Marchant was eventually fired.

“Racism has no place in our city and will not be tolerated in government,” said then Mayor of Providence Jorge O. Elorza. ministry and those who violate will be brought to justice.

Legal liability and its impact on the police

Agents recognized for posting racist content on social media have seen their character challenged on witness bars and have even been completely rejected.

“It depends on your moral character, which is something that they are allowed to take into account with the work you do because of the engagement you make with the public and how you are perceived by the public. , but also how you view the public, ”Richard M. Frankel, a retired FBI special agent and ABC News contributor, told Harvard Crimson in a March article on the social media controversies of Cambridge Police. “They can come up to me and cross-examine me, basically, that I arrested them because of my biases, not because of what they did and because of the work I do.”

Eugene Volokh, a professor at UCLA Law School, an expert on the First Amendment, said biased posts from an officer are usually not enough for cases to be dismissed or reopened, and a hateful post on social media is not a criminal offense per se.

What the Posts can do is open departments to civil rights lawsuits.

“It could be a racist speech, it could be a speech that clearly opposes racial bigotry,” Volokh said. “If someone says, ‘All Klan men are slime and deserve what happens to them’ – perfectly plausible position, but if the person is prosecuted for allegedly beating a Klan man, that would be used as evidence against him.

More than just a police problem

Social media posts in recent months have also fueled concerns in other areas of government.

In September, Hanover, MA High School fired teacher Kari MacRae, a member of the Bourne school committee, after posting anti-LGBTQ and anti-critical remarks about racial theory on the social media platform TikTok .

Related: Bourne School Board Member Won’t Resign Due to Social Media Posts

In early October, the New Hampshire Legislative Ethics Board formally reprimanded state representative James Spillane, R-Deerfield, for four terms, over an anti-Semitic meme he shared on the social media site Speak.

Public officials have also been prosecuted for blocking voters on social media. Woonsocket, Rhode Island, Mayor Lisa Baldelli-Hunt settled a federal lawsuit in August after blocking two reviews on her official Mayor’s Facebook page.

For Mark Hughes, co-founder of the Vermont advocacy group Justice For All, such cases illustrate a deep-rooted societal problem. The solution, said the former Burlington Police Commissioner, involves more than monitoring cops for their internet habits.

Related: BTV Police Commissioner Resigns, Citing City Inaction On Demonstrators’ Demands

“The whole conversation about… the police is a very, very small (part) of a much, much larger conversation,” said Hughes, highlighting how people of color deal with systemic housing injustice, education, health services, development, transport. and other areas. “So when we contextualize this conversation about (Burlington Police Chief resigns for social media misconduct in 2019), it really isn’t that important to a lot of black people.”

Related: Burlington Police Commission Not Aware Of Fake Twitter Account Behind Del Pozo’s Leave

Restoring public confidence

Some police departments and municipalities have created or strengthened social media policies to restore public confidence after scandals, as Cambridge did after a Police Commissioner accidentally posted an explicit tweet using the official Twitter account of the department in 2020.

Again, however, Hughes argues that the socio-economic issues at the root of the problem involve more than a single agent or department.

Hughes said he would challenge the idea that public trust can be restored with reactive political responses, as that trust may not have existed in the first place in certain communities of color.

“I am not entirely sure that the efforts here are effective in the most underserved communities to give that confidence that we are safer,” he said.

Hughes and Calvert agreed that the answer involves law enforcement and government officials working closely with their communities to put words into action.

“It’s not enough to take a person’s knee off your neck; you also need to have the opportunity not only to survive but also to thrive in communities, ”said Hughes.

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