Florida officer fired for racist posts, captions about black people on Facebook

theGRIO REPORT - Fort Lauderdale Officer Jeffery Feldewert is the fifth Florida cop to be dismissed for racist comments this year alone...

Fort Lauderdale Officer Jeffery Feldewert is the fifth Florida cop to be dismissed for racist comments this year alone.

Feldewert had initially been suspended with pay as the police department launched an investigation into his use of social media. He was in trouble for posting this message about black suspects in 2014: “Black People: Because without them the evening news wouldn’t be as much fun to watch.”

The comments stemmed from an article about a fight that took place at a Coral Spring restaurant, in which all of the suspects arrested were African-American. On the article, Feldewert commented, “Typical hoodrat behavior,” and then posted an image of an African-American man being arrested with the aforementioned caption.

The announcement of Feldewert’s dismissal comes not long after four other Florida officers were let go for racist texts and other messages shared between them.

Gordon Weekes, the chief assistant public defender for Broward County, said that the string of racially-motivated behaviors was disturbing. “It’s a clear message that we can’t trust the police,” he said. “It strikes fear in the whole community when you believe that officers are going to treat you differently and hunt you down like a savage simply because you’re black.”

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