Cop Fired Days After Being Sworn in For Racist Social Media Post
A Pleasant Hill, Missouri police officer was fired days after being sworn in because citizens found a racist social media post
A police officer from Pleasant Hill, Missouri was suspended with pay after four hours of service and just days after being sworn in. Officer Jacob Smith took his oath at a Monday, August 14 city council meeting. Soon after, social media users began looking him up online and found a racist anti-Black meme he posted, according to Pleasant Hill Police Chief Tommy Wright.
This incident highlights the flaws in the hiring process for police departments across the country - resulting in race-based police brutality. Something as simple as vetting an officer’s social media posts is routinely overlooked. Police officers are being found to be members of neo-Nazi gangs in their ranks. In L.A., those gangs even include many Latinos with anti-Black beliefs.
Police officers across the country have been exposed for being members of anti-government extremist groups, associated and working with hate groups like the Proud Boys - including creating small seemingly unorganized lynch mobs. They have been caught providing cover for those who have committed lynchings and murdered unarmed Black people while hiding behind the “color of law,” as the Department of Justice (DOJ) likes to say. They even commit perjury in what is called “testilying” to provide cover for each other and ensure the convictions of innocent people.
This is not as uncommon as most people think it is when you consider how many police officers hold the same beliefs as those who attempted a coup on January 6, 2021. The same thoughts that racists hold as they hide behind sloganeering like “All Lives Matter” and “Blue Lives Matter”. Most even hide behind the cross and take passages from the Bible out of context to justify their beliefs and their hate-driven actions. Sound familiar? Of course, it does. It’s precisely what the Ku Klux Klan does and they are everywhere.
Prejudiced doctors, judges, lawyers, politicians, and yes, cops are in positions of power all over the country. Racists, bigots, and extremists have been making a concerted effort for decades to infiltrate law enforcement. So it should come as no surprise when you find out they are police captains, police chiefs, district attorneys, and mayors. The truth is that hate-fueled people have been allowed to conduct these infiltrations unabated for far too long. And until we address it by holding them to account and removing them from office or positions of power, nothing will change.
Police departments across the country don’t concern themselves with the vetting process so much because the standards to be cops are so low. With only a few months of training (if that), it’s no wonder most of them don’t understand the law as it is written. Instead, they understand it based on the belief that they’re superior and the laws were created specifically for non-white people.
And when you consider U.S. history and the implementation of legislation to control non-white populations - from Jim Crow and mass incarceration to inhumane immigration policy solely targeting people from the Global South that bolstering the private-prison-industrial-complex - there’s a reason cops and their trainers think as they do and nothing ever changes.
Instead, the federal government grants police more power and nearly unlimited budgets.
Arturo is a freelance writer, journalist, and publisher of The Antagonist Magazine and a regular contributor at Latino Rebels and Unicorn Riot. You can find him on Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, Mastodon, and Threads.
I am surprised that you didn’t mention the abuse of qualified immunity. At least one bad seed got fired.