By Royce Dunmore, NewsOne
A Louisiana cop was fired after reportedly posting racists comments.
KLFY says the Kaplan police officer Steven Aucoin made the comment in a live feed for the governor’s Friday press conference.
One commenter posted, “Virus that was created to kill all the blacks is death” to which Aucoin responded, “Well it didn’t work.” Then, he commented again, “how unfortunate.”
Chief of Police, Joshua Hardy, slammed Aucoin, saying this behavior is not tolerated within the department and Aucoin was fired after an investigation of the entire thread.
“We’re held to a higher standard than normal civilians, so you got to watch what you do, you got to watch what you say. You can’t just go and post anything you want on social media,” said the police chief.
Louisiana native and firefighter, Joshua Brothers, says he understands being fired for violated social media policies. However, he argued that Aucoin’s comments could’ve been a misunderstanding because of how Facebook works.
“The newest update that Facebook does. It doesn’t put the comments in consecutive order like it used to. It’s not a time line thing. Relevant newer comments might be above. Some comments aren’t listed at all.”
Brothers argued that the screenshots could’ve been taken out of context, causing the officer’s career to be ruined.
“I just wanna see the true story brought out to light you know regardless of what it is. But I don’t believe that was his intent,” he said.
Another Kaplan resident, Victoria Verdun, said the termination was a mistake, saying that Aucoin was a good cop when he reported to her home. “He’s the only one that follows the rulebook,” she said. “He doesn’t yell or curse at you like other officers do and I just don’t think it’s right. He’s far from a racist. He’s far from rude or whatever else people are calling him. He is just a man trying to provide for his family.”
However, police say they investigated the whole timeline soon after they were notified. Chief Hardy explained, “There were some comments that were further up that was not suitable for a police officer to put up on Facebook.”
According to screenshots taken by a Facebook user of the comments, Aucoin posted other comments like, “LOL you people have no clue you think your pathetic existence is meaningful. How many times have you been to combat for the rights you think you deserve for leaching off this country.”
Hardy said that the department is making moves to make sure this will never happen again. He said he’s reached out to his officers regarding the social media policy, which was updated when he came to office.
This article originally appeared on NewsOne.
