A total of 72 Philadelphia police officers haven been taken off the streets due to offensive social media posts.
Philadelphia Police Commissioner Richard Ross confirmed that members on the force were placed on administrative duty following an internal investigation into alleged anti-Muslim social media posts made by the officers.
The posts, which were uncovered by a team of researchers who spent two years looking at the personal Facebook accounts of police officers from Arizona to Florida, found officers bashing immigrants and Muslims while promoting racist stereotypes, identifying with right-wing militant groups. On top of that, some were even glorifying police brutality— publicly!
Not only were the officers taken off patrol duty, they also had their guns confiscated as the Internal Affairs Bureau (IAB) investigates approximately 3,100 total posts. Ross said he does expect “several dozen” of the seventy-two officers to be fired while others remain after taking a new racial sensitivity training.
“We’ve talked about, from the outset, how disturbing, how disappointing and upsetting these posts are, and they will undeniably impact police-community relations,” Ross said.