Authorities are investigating a Washington, D.C., firefighter for Facebook posts he made in the wake of the Baton Rouge shooting, advocating for “targeting racist cops” and shooting “those pigs” in the head.
Norman Brooks, with the D.C. Fire and EMS Department, fired off a series of violently charged Facebook posts after hearing about the fatal shooting of Alton Sterling by two police officers in Baton Rouge, Louisiana Tuesday. The department placed him on administrative duty after learning the Metropolitan Police Department was investigating Brooks’ messages, reports Fox 5.
“These racist [expletive] cops who are murder our people need to start turning up the same way…they shouldn’t feel safe walking the streets and neither should their supporters,” Brooks wrote in a now-deleted Facebook post, which he asked people to share, according to Fox 5. “Its time to stop praying, stop protesting, start buying guns, and start protecting ourselves from these crooked [expletive] racist cops. If you are a cop and are not in support of these people then its about time to start turning these type a [expletives] in or at least givin out some addresses so we the people can handle em.”
Brooks later told Fox 5 he never advocated physical harm or death, defending his posts as a simple reaction to the events in Baton Rouge. Another Facebook post doubles down on his sentiments, further advocating violence against police.
“The answer is ‘yes’…Im saying the citizens should take the law in their own hands and target racist cops,” Brooks wrote in another deleted Facebook post. “Those pigs in baton Rouge deserve nothing short of a bullet in their heads. See how their families feel after that.”
Brooks maintains he is not telling people to go out and start killing cops. The posts, he said, were simple exercises of his Second Amendment rights, but does acknowledge he should have “used a couple better choice words,” reports WTOP.
Brooks serves in Foggy Bottom on the campus of George Washington University.
“I do not condone any violence against any good, innocent people, cops or whatever,” Brooks told Fox 5. “All I’m saying is that if anybody, whether it is a criminal cop or a criminal person, tries to attack you or makes you feel some sort of way inside your own community, you have a right as an American citizen to defend yourself. Anyone else who received that differently, then I don’t know what to tell you because I have never committed a crime in my life.”
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