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Officer under fire for alleged racist Facebook post

Posted at 6:36 PM, Oct 12, 2017
and last updated 2017-10-12 19:49:00-04

VERDAGRIS, Ok. -- A police officer is accused of posting a racist comment on social media.

2 Works for You is not naming the Verdagris officer, but he allegedly commented on a Facebook post about NFL protests saying:

“Precisely why I don’t watch NFL bunch of f**** over paid greasy headed moon crickets expecting everything for nothing!! It would make my day to b**** slap the Jerry juice outta every one of em’s hair!! F*** EM!! #sorrynotf****sorry”

Verdagris Police Chief Jack Shackelford admitted, "Though you're off duty, you're still responsible for your actions. Especially being a police officer, sometimes your off-duty actions will reflect over to your on-duty time."

Shackelford was surprised to hear about his officer’s Facebook post, but the officer said he didn’t post it, claiming to the chief that his account had been hacked.

When 2 Works for You reporter Travis Guillory asked Chief Shackelford if he personally thought the post was racist, he responded, “The context of it could possibly be considered racist. It's a term I’ve never heard before.” 

That term was ‘moon crickets.’ Urban Dictionary defines moon crickets as being “derived from early slave times when black people would come out at night and sing slave songs under the moonlight like crickets.”

Marq Lewis, community activist with We The People, said, “These are things that we have been talking about in the past in reference to police officers. There is this bias towards minorities.”

Lewis says the officer should be fired, adding, “No officer at all should be driving around the streets of Oklahoma with that type of mindset. There is no class that he could take that is going to change him magically. This is a cultural issue.”

But the chief is holding an internal investigation before taking any disciplinary action.

He said, “We have a policy in place at the police department. It's been places i've been here for five years. It addresses the social media and what you can and can't use in it.”

The chief says the officer has not come in to give a formal statement about the Facebook post. During the internal investigation, Chief Shackelford says he will look at similar past cases and evaluate how other departments have handled incidents like this.

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