By Ellie Rushing
The Philadelphia Inquirer
PHILADELPHIA — The Philadelphia Police Department was within its rights to fire or discipline 20 police officers who made racist or offensive posts on Facebook in 2019, a federal judge ruled Monday, bringing an end to a lawsuit the officers filed against the city four years ago.
The ruling by U.S. District Judge Wendy Beetlestone comes just days before the case was set to go to trial. The officers sued the city in 2020 after they were disciplined over a scandal the year before when a website called the Plain View Project published a database of offensive social media posts made by police officers in several cities, including Philadelphia.
Hundreds of officers in Philly were implicated, and the Philadelphia Police Department responded by firing 15 officers and disciplining dozens more — the largest act of mass police discipline in recent city history.
Twenty of those officers sued, saying that their posts were made on their personal accounts and did not reflect their work on the force and that the department’s punishment was arbitrary, inconsistent, and in violation of their free speech rights. The case was at one point dismissed and then later reinstated.
The city argued in an August filing that the case should not go to trial and that the judge should review the facts and determine the outcome. Beetlestone agreed, and on Monday announced that she sided with the city, effectively dismissing the case.
In her opinion, Beetlestone wrote that the officers’ posts and comments were “likely to cause significant interference” with the police department and the city’s operations and thus, did not constitute protected speech.
She described in detail how each officer’s statements could degrade public trust, demean populations they’re tasked with protecting, and make the officers unreliable witnesses if called to testify in a case, a key part of the job.
The city Law Department declined to comment, as did Andrew Teitelman, who represents eight of the officers. Attorney Larry Crain, who represents the 12 others, did not respond to a request for comment.
The revelation of the social media posts — which included homophobic, Islamophobic, racist, and violent language — ignited a firestorm in Philadelphia and across the country in 2019. More than 70 officers were taken off the street amid an internal investigation launched by then-Police Commissioner Richard Ross , and protesters gathered outside department headquarters to call for widespread firings.
Among the posts made by the officers who sued the city:
1. Sgt. Joseph Przepiorka shared a photo of a skeleton wrapped in a U.S. flag, carrying a gun, and the words Death To Islam on top.
2. Robert Bannon shared a meme with the words: “Statistics show criminals commit less crime after they’ve been shot.”
3. Thomas Gack shared a photo comparing voters of former President Barack Obama to chimpanzees.
4. Joseph Fox wrote that he was teaching his dog to urinate on Muslims.
The city said the officers’ posts degraded public trust, made Philly residents “less likely to report crimes, to offer testimony as witnesses, and to rely on the police for their protection.” They threatened “the very communities that [the officers] are sworn to protect,” the city said.
Some officers were charged with disciplinary code violations and neglect of duty. Others were fired because department leadership “believed that a post or posts were so egregious that an officer could not function as a Philadelphia Police Officer because of the impact it would have on the community for that officer to continue to serve.”
The officers and their attorneys said the police department was biased in its discipline and targeted conservative employees while ignoring what they considered to be offensive posts from liberal officers.
They included screenshots of posts made by an officer in which she criticized former President Donald Trump, including a cartoon that showed Trump dressed in a white Ku Klux Klan hood.
The officers also said their posts did not interfere with their work in the community.
Most of those who were fired ultimately had their dismissals overturned by an arbitrator and were permitted to return to the force. The termination of one officer, Daniel Farrelly, was upheld, according to the city, for posts that celebrated protesters getting run over, mocked Black vernacular, and called a Black woman who lost relatives to a fire an “animal.”
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