Cops Spark Ire With Freddie Gray Tweets

Police union's memes get immediate response
By Neal Colgrass,  Newser Staff
Posted Jun 26, 2016 3:30 PM CDT
Cops Spark Ire With Freddie Gray Tweets
A cropped version of an image posted by the Baltimore FOP.   (Baltimore City FOP via Twitter)

The Baltimore police union is catching flak for a couple of tweets it posted in the wake of a police officer's acquittal last week, the Hill reports. Officer Caesar Goodson, who drove the police van in which Freddie Gray died in 2015, was found not guilty on all charges on Thursday—and the Baltimore Fraternal Order of Police first tweeted about it Friday night. The tweet shows an image of Leonardo DiCaprio toasting champagne in The Great Gatsby along with the text, "Here's to the Baltimore 6 defense team, the FOP and Detective Taylor" (Taylor being Dawnyell Taylor, the head detective investigating Gray's death in a police van in 2015). The next tweet came Saturday, showing Baltimore's State's Attorney Marilyn Mosby with the text, "The Wolf That Lurks."

The tweets have been removed, but the DiCaprio image can still be seen on the FOP's Facebook page and the Mosby meme was retweeted here. Regardless, Baltimore officials responded with sharp remarks. "Inappropriate, insensitive remarks or attacks that serve to detract from our necessary relationships with our community and criminal justice partners have no place in our City," says Baltimore Police Commissioner Kevin Davis in a tweeted statement. City Council President Bernard C. Young called the tweets "insensitive and inflammatory" and said they "only serve to further exacerbate distrust," per BuzzFeed. The union hasn't commented or issued an apology in the matter. (More Baltimore stories.)

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