DALLAS (AP) — Dallas police are joining law enforcement agencies nationwide in reviewing officers’ statements on social media.
The review follows publication of a database that appears to catalog thousands of bigoted or violent posts by police officers.
More than 1,000 public posts from people identified as current and former Dallas officers were flagged by researchers with The Plain View Project , who spent two years looking at the personal Facebook accounts of police from Arizona to Florida.
The Dallas Police Department is working with the project’s leader and going over each post to see if department policy was violated, a spokeswoman told The Associated Press.
Ekram Haque, interim executive director of the Council on American-Islamic Relations Dallas/Fort Worth chapter, condemned the posts Thursday as Islamophobic and racist.
The Dallas Police Department should denounce the posts and assure city residents “of all faiths and ethnicities that they will receive professional and unbiased service from their police officers,” Haque said in a statement.
Dallas Police Association President Mike Mata said some posts may merely be dark humor or have been taken out of context. But he said the department should act if something is “a shock to the conscience.”
