Over 70 Philadelphia police officers have been placed on administrative duty after alleged racist and violent Facebook posts were compiled on a website called the Plain View Project. The project is an online database that showcases social media posts from police officers’ personal pages.
The Plain View Project has documented police officer social media posts from other major cities such as Dallas, Texas and St. Louis, Missouri.
In Philadelphia, what originally started as an investigation into ten officers has quickly grown to many more members of the department.
“We’ve talked about from the outset how disturbing, how disappointing and upsetting these posts are and how they will undeniably impact police-community relations and we’re not naïve to that fact and nor are we dismissive of it,” Philadelphia Police Commissioner Richard Ross said on Wednesday.
Ross said punishments for the officers will range from one day suspensions to firings, which he expects will happen in some of the cases.
Because of the volume of the posts and personnel involved Philadelphia’s Internal Affairs is working with a law firm to comb through and see which posts are protected under the First Amendment.
“Internal Affairs has identified and prioritized the posts clearly advocating violence or death against any protected class such as ethnicity, national origin, sex, religion and race. These officers have been removed from the street that fall under these categories,” Ross said.
Some of the posts in question involved sharing memes that said “Death to Islam” and asking when a Trump supporter will “blow away one of these domestic terrorists democrats?”
