Sheriff's Office Reportedly Puts 'All Lives Splatter' Meme Of Protesters Being Hit By Car On Facebook
The Yakima Herald published a screenshot yesterday of a now-deleted Facebook post which reportedly came from Washington State's Chelan County Emergency Management page just one month after a woman was killed in a ramming attack. The post showed a meme that said "nobody cares about your protest" and "keep your ass out of the road" under "all lives splatter" going across the top of the photo.
According to the screenshots, the employee wrote "I don't wish harm on anyone...but protesters don't belong in the road!" along with the share, which came from a "Libtards; ya gotta love 'em!" Facebook page:
Obviously, it's a play on the Black Lives Matter movement, which protests police brutality against people of color. And this is clearly not a great look for any law enforcement agency.
The meme's share came a month almost to the day after a vehicle plowed into counter protesters marching against a white-nationalist rally in Charlottesville, Virginia in August, killing one and injuring dozens.
Several news outlets report that this post accidentally showed up on the Chelan County Emergency Management Facebook account. The local sheriff's office responded to the post as shown below, saying the office "felt terrible" and removed it as soon as someone "realized the error."
The office said changes had been made to keep it from happening again, but did not say if there would be any repercussions for the employee:
But, oddly enough, a person claiming to be that employee began responding to comments on the statement to explain how the original post got there. Whether it was purposely from the account or not some of the comments are below:
Another set of comments all but verified the reported original post, as people claimed that the Chelan County Emergency Management page was deleting comments with links to and screenshots of it. The page responded, asking a specific person sharing screenshots to stop doing so since the post was "offensive before and it is offensive now":
The problem is, this employee's postings on the page starkly contrast each other. The employee claimed to recognize that it was an "offensive" share to begin with, but also said it was meant to be sent to a cousin and that it wouldn't happen again because the person was "trying to figure out how to unlink [their] personal and work pages."
But that's not the real issue. That someone in law enforcement feels this sort of thing is a laugh riot, but will keep that opinion off of official channels from now on, doesn't reflect especially well on that organization, to put it delicately.
And it looks like, even in the spotlight of hundreds of Facebook commenters, this employee wasn't able to pick up on that.