Florida cop suspended for racially insensitive Instagram posts
A Florida police officer was suspended for 10 days after violating the department’s social media policy.
The suspension came after the Jacksonville County Sheriff’s Office probed Lt. Trudy Callahan’s social media activity after she posted an image to her Instagram account of a black man on a chain-link fence.
“Yeah its almost Friday so get your Hood Hammock,” Callahan wrote in a caption on the post, which was made in 2015. “Ready to chillax.”
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After the image went viral, and after the backlash that followed, Callahan deleted her Instagram account. However, she has claimed that the posts were “taken out of context” and “twisted and turned to fit people’s agendas.”
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None of the posts were created by Callahan, but she re-posted several of them with comments made by other users that were considered to be racially insensitive.
In one image that Callahan re-shared, a police sketch drawing of a man in dreadlocks included the caption from another user, “The police really expect somebody to find this n—-s. I know 6 n—-s that looks like this.”
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“I could be a sketch artist,” Callahan wrote on the post.
Another image was of a black man standing in a line of cars waiting for an ATM.
“When you need money to get gas for the car you can’t drive up to the ATM,” she wrote.
According to the New York Daily News, this isn’t Callahan’s first time in trouble for her conduct. In her 20-year career on the police force, she had been suspended three times before. She was also the subject of numerous complaints during her time in the Jacksonville County Sheriff’s Office.
Callahan has appealed the suspension.
