NYPD Under Fire for Racial Slurs on Facebook
The NYPD is under fire for allegedly starting a Facebook group that used racial slurs and offensive language to rant about working the annual West Indian Day parade in Brooklyn, NY.
The Facebook group seems to give a clear indication that many New York City officers do not like working the West Indian Day parade. The group called, “No More West Indian Day Parade Detail,” used language such as “animals” and “savages” to describe parade goers.
The group was discovered in November by Brooklyn lawyers, Benjamin Moore and Paul Lieberman in their defense of Tyrone Johnson who was arrested before the parade on gun charges, according to the New York Times. They found that, the arresting officer, Sergeant Dustin Edwards was a member of the group.
Get Our Latest News for FREE
NYPD Spokesman, Paul Browne said the affair is being looked at by Internal Affairs.
The page has been removed and officers have defended themselves by saying that the group is a meeting place for "NYPD officers who are threatened by superiors and forced to be victims themselves by the violence of the West Indian Day massacre."
Nick Virgilio, one of the officers identified as a member of this group, told the New York Times that the comments weren’t his and that someone hacked his Facebook account and wrote those things. However, The Times discovered that 60 percent of the group members were police officers.
According to the Huff Post one of the officers said, “I say have the parade one more year, and when they all gather drop a bomb and wipe them all out.”
Another said, “The safety of cops should be more important than the safety of “the animals.”
They referred to working the parade as “ghetto training” and suggested relocating the parade to the zoo. The event was described as “Savage Day,” “coconut parade” and “pure savagery,” according to the Daily News.
The West Indian Day Parade does see its share of violence and shootings and there have been clashes between police and parade-goers in the past. This past year cops shot and accidentally killed an innocent woman and racially profiled and arrested a city councilman.
Public Advocate Bill De Blasio demands a full investigation of the derogatory remarks made towards African-Americans and West Indian New Yorkers.
“If these allegations are substantiated, the officers involved must face the strongest possible disciple,” Blasio told the Daily News Tuesday.
