NYPD investigating officers' Facebook comments

The New York Times said it obtained a copy of postings made on the Facebook page, titled "No More West Indian Day Detail"

UPI

NEW YORK CITY — The New York City Police Department says it will investigate a report officers made racist and inflammatory comments on Facebook about West Indian parade-goers.

The New York Times reports that in the postings, people participating in the September parade in Brooklyn were described as "animals" and "savages." One posting suggested, "Drop a bomb on them and wipe them all out" while another read, "Let them kill each other."

The Times said it obtained a copy of postings made on the Facebook page, titled "No More West Indian Day Detail," before it was taken down in September.

Paul J. Browne, the department's deputy commissioner for public information, said he learned of the Facebook group from a reporter and the postings would be investigated by the Internal Affairs Bureau.

The Labor Day weekend West Indian American Day Parade has been beset by violence, including deaths of parade-goers, the Times said.

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The newspaper said it's impossible to be certain those quoted are the people they claimed to be on Facebook but apparently used their real names, and comparing the names of some of the more than 150 who posted with city employee listings showed more than 60 percent matched names of police officers. Browne did not deny they were officers, the Times said.

Two lawyers with Brooklyn Defender Services, Benjamin Moore and Paul Lieberman, provided the Times a digital copy of the Facebook conversation after the lawyers had introduced many of the comments before a jury in a gun-possession case.

Moore found the officer who had arrested his client before the West Indian parade in 2010, Sgt. Dustin Edwards, was a Facebook member whose profile said he belonged to a group for "NYPD officers who are threatened by violence of the West Indian Day massacre," the Times said.

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