The New York Police Department is taking disciplinary action against 17 officers for posting offensive remarks on their Facebook pages about revelers after 2011’s West Indian American Day Parade.
Commenters voiced their complaints on a Facebook page called “No More West Indian Day Detail,” where they left a number of racist remarks. Some called paradegoers “savages” and “animals,” and one even called it the “unemployment parade.”
The page has been deleted, but a copy has been archived on Scribd. The page had more than 150 comments, 20 of them from NYPD officers, notes the New York Times.
Many people suggested the parade should be moved from Brooklyn to Manhattan so Mayor Michael Bloomberg could see the raucousness of it first hand so he could understand how out of control it is. At the 2011 parade, there were three shootings and police seized 14 guns the night before the event.
The New York Times revealed the page’s existence in December. After being alerted to the page, police commissioner Ray Kelly vowed to conduct an internal affairs investigation. The investigation’s findings were released Wednesday.
The NYPD is disciplining 17 officers by penalizing them with a gamut of punishments. Four officers are facing department trials, seven officers will be reprimanded, and six officers will be receive a “command discipline,” where they will be docked up to 10 vacation days.
A police spokesperson said he didn’t know which officer’s Facebook comment corresponded with what level of punishment.
Photo via Dirk Klein/ Flickr
