Thread by @TracyJan

Nearly 400 active-duty and retired law enforcement officers from across the United States are members of Confederate, anti-Islam, misogynistic or anti-government militia groups on Facebook, a @reveal investigation found.
revealnews.org/article/inside…

These cops have worked at every level of American law enforcement, from tiny, rural sheriff’s departments to the largest agencies in the country, such as the LAPD & NYPD. They work in jails and schools and airports, on boats and trains and in patrol cars.

One guard at the Angola prison in Louisiana, Geoffery Crosby, was a member of 56 extremist groups, including 45 Confederate groups and one called “BAN THE NAACP.”

A detective at the Harris County Sheriff’s Office in Houston, James “J.T.” Thomas, was a member of the “The White Privilege Club.” The Facebook group contains hundreds of hateful, racist & anti-Semitic posts, & invites to events like the Charlottesville Unite the Right rally.

Thomas once posted the logo for the Black College Football Hall of Fame with a simple caption: “Seriously. Why?” Soon after, he posted a meme about an elderly African American woman confusedly responding to a reporter’s question by naming a fried chicken restaurant.

In a hearing to appeal his firing, Thomas said he didn’t realize he was a member of the closed group & defended his behavior. “If you remove the black female out of the picture, what’s racist about it?” he said. Harris County Sheriff’s Civil Service Commission upheld his firing.

Lonnie Allen Brown of the Kingsville Police Department in Texas, a member of three Islamophobic groups, posted an image that read: “Islam. A cult of oppression, rape, pedophilia and murder cannot be reasoned with!”

Will Weisenberger, a sheriff’s deputy in Madison County, Mississippi, was a member of a closed Facebook group called “White Lives Matter.” He’s also been caught up in a @ACLU lawsuit against the department for engaging in decades of systemic racism and discriminatory policing.

Racism was so systematic at the Madison County Sheriff’s Department, the ACLU asserts, that the department’s blank arrest forms came with two words already filled in: “Black” and “Male.”