The "No More West Indian Day Parade Detail" Facebook group for NYPD officers has vanished, but over 70 pages worth of racist, violent comments directed at paradegoers (including "Let them kill each other") were uncovered by a pair of Brooklyn lawyers and have been given to The New York Times.
The Times has verified that at least 60 percent of the groups' members are indeed New York's finest.
Gothamist parsed through the report for some of the "lowlights":
One commenter referred to working the parade detail as "ghetto training," while another recommended relocating the parade "to the zoo."
The safety of cops should be more important that the safety of "the animals," said one.
"It's not racist if it's true," declared another.
"Welcome to the Liberal NYC Gale, where if the cops sneeze too loud they get investigated for excessive force but the ‘civilians’ can run around like savages and there are no repercussions," one person opined.
"Why is everyone calling this a parade," a group member asked. "It's a scheduled riot."
Another suggested, "I say have the parade one more year, and when they all gather drop a bomb and wipe them all out."
The group described itself as a meeting place for "NYPD officers who are threatened by superiors and forced to be victims themselves by the violence of the West Indian Day massacre" and was created in September, just after the parade. It wasn't until November, however, that the group was discovered.
Lawyers Benjamin Moore and Paul Lieberman found the Facebook rants in their defense of Tyrone Johnson, who was arrested hours before the parade and acquitted of the gun charges last month, according to The New York Daily News. While doing an online search, Moore and Lieberman discovered that Johnson's arresting officer, Sergeant Dustin Edwards, belonged to the group.
NYPD spokesman Paul Browne reportedly has referred the matter to the Internal Affairs Bureau for investigation.
The vibrant and colorful West Indian Day Parade is a source of familiar tension between police and Brooklyn's Caribbean community. During this year's festivities, which were particularly violent, some of the floats' MCs could be heard saying "We love the NYPD!"-- an attempt to bridge a divide, that after today's news, will likely grow wider (and to remember how much fun some of the cops were having!)
One of the Facebook groups' derogatory commenters was identified as officer Nick Virgilio, who told The News the comments weren't his and thinks someone hacked into his Facebook account. "I tried to reach out to Facebook because I've had problems with people going on there who wrote things that I had nothing to do with," he said. "This happened a couple of times, most recently several months ago."
However, over at NYPD Rant, a message board for police officers, some cops are doubling down on their colleague's feelings about the parade. "For the record, most of the participants at the West Indies Day Parade are fvcking savages who walked out from the jungle 2 minutes ago," one commenter wrote.
Stay classy NYPD, stay classy.
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