A Detroit detective was demoted Monday after calling "Black Lives Matter" activists “terrorists” and “racists” in a viral Facebook post.
During a news conference, police chief James Craig said the detective, Nathan Weekley, who is white, had been “downgraded” to the rank of a regular officer while the department conducted an internal investigation.
“We have worked so hard, and continue to work, in making sure we have great relationship with everyone here in Detroit,” Craig said, adding that such comments “have a tendency to undermine” those relationships.
“Police officers, including myself, we’re held to a much higher standard,” he said. “When we voice an opinion contrary to the department’s mission and goals, that’s a problem.”
In the post, which Weekely wrote after the killing of five law enforcement officers in Dallas last week, the detective lamented their deaths and said that for the first time in his 17 years as an officer he “contemplated calling in to work in response to the outrageous act perpetrated” against them.
“It seems like the only response that will demonstrate our importance to society as a whole,” he wrote, according to NBC affiliate WDIV. “The only racists here are the piece of [expletive] black Lives Matter terrorists and their supporters.”
Weekley deleted the post, Craig said, but it continued “trending” and the local chapter of the National Action Network notified him of it.
Craig added that the department was examining a second “troubling post” from a black supervisor. Saying that he had just been briefed on the comments, Craig declined to provide additional details.
Four people in Detroit were also arrested for mentioning the killing of white police officers on social media, Craig said, and authorities were pursuing felony charges for threatening to kill an officer.
