A 911 operator in Texas was fired Wednesday after allegedly making a series of racist remarks on her Facebook page.
In Facebook posts that only her friends could see, 911 operator April Sims, 23, apparently compared black people to "animals" and said she could "count on one hand" those she knew "who didn't have [expletive] for brains," according to local ABC affiliate WFAA-TV.
Some of the offensive comments reportedly relate to Sims' work responding to emergency calls.
“I’m a very easygoing person and I will give the shirt off my back to help others, but when call after call are black people fighting and screaming and hitting each other and they want to yell at me and treat me like [expletive] when I’m trying to help, is not cool,” Sims allegedly wrote in a post, according to The Dallas Morning News.
A statement on the Dallas Police Department's Facebook page reads:
On June 4, 2013, a call taker for the City of Dallas advised a supervisor in the 9-1-1 Call Center that April Sims, who is also a Call Taker, had violated the Dallas Police Department’s Social Media policy. On June 5, 2013, Ms. Sims’ employment with the City of Dallas was terminated. Ms. Sims was hired by the City of Dallas in November 2012. Ms. Sims was on probation and therefore has no right to appeal her termination.
In a video broadcast on WFAA-TV, Dallas City Council member Dwaine Caraway said he was shocked and saddened. He said the incident embarrassed the police department and the city.
Public employees who have lost their jobs over racist messages on social networks have made headlines in other states recently.
In April, EMT Timothy Dluhos quit his $93,000 per year job with the New York Fire Department after being suspended for a series of racist tweets that complained about "coloreds," "chinks [who] can't drive," and about New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg, who Dluhos referred to as "King Heeb."
In another high-profile New York scandal, the son of FDNY Commissioner Salvatore Cassano, Joseph Cassano, who also worked as an EMT, quit his job in March after hateful tweets about blacks and Jews surfaced, according to the New York Times.