Review board asking for further action on cops’ Facebook posts
A months-long dispute about the investigation of an Orlando officer’s social media comments culminated Wednesday, when the city’s Citizens’ Police Review Board worked to finalize its request for harsher sanctions against the officer.
Officer Robert Schellhorn was investigated after using offensive language in a Facebook comment that described NFL players as “overpaid thugs” and Heather Heyer, a woman who was killed counter-protesting a white nationalist riot in Charlottesville, Va., last year, an “asshole killed by another asshole.”
The officer was suspended 80 hours after multiple citizen complaints, for which he forfeited accrued time off.
Wednesday’s nearly finished draft of a letter to Chief John Mina expressed board members’ dissatisfaction with the investigation and called for recommended policy changes to handle language that expresses intolerance by department employees.
In a June meeting, board members called for the inclusion of Officer Shawn Dunlap in the letter, who was the subject of a citizen complaint that was never investigated. Dunlap, who created the original Facebook post Schellhorn commented on, served as a witness in Schellhorn’s investigation, preventing him from facing a separate probe.
Wednesday’s letter urged the agency to disclose all citizen-filed complaints to the review board.
“The board feels that since a complaint was filed against both officers, that findings should have also been determined for both officers,” the letter states. “It is for this reason that we recommend [the investigation] be amended or modified to also include findings as to officer Shawn Dunlap.”
Members of the public spoke in support of the board’s recommendations and agreed the Police Department should fire Schellhorn for racially biased and divisive remarks.
“Officer Schellhorn is indicative of the problem so many cities face around the country,” community member Vincent Polite said. “Many have created a police force that has now decided there is an us-versus-them narrative that justifies the idea of treating fellow American citizens as others in order to marginalize and reduce a person’s humanity, validate their mistreatment of them, which is often rooted in hatred and racial supremacy.”
The panel’s letter asked the agency to use Schellhorn as an example for a policy change in handling comments that express minority intolerance.
“In cases evidencing racial intolerance such as this, the board recommends that the appropriate punishment should be termination,” the letter said.
Attorney Henry Lim, a board member since 2013, recommended that the letter also mention employees who express disparaging remarks about people with disabilities.
In the slew of online posts, Schellhorn called one Facebook commenter a “f---tard savage.”
“In cases evidencing racial intolerance such as this, the board recommends that the appropriate punishment should be termination.” Orlando police review board letter to Chief John Mina
“We also need to remember the ‘R’ word is hate speech,” said Tiffany Namey, president of the Orange County Democratic Disability Caucus.
“When we hear ablest language like the conjunction Officer Schellhorn used — I don’t think I need to repeat them but they end in the letters t-a-r-d — we know that he has some serious biases against our community.”
The board delayed sending the letter at its last meeting because Mina unveiled a updated department social media policy that allows an officer to be terminated for online conduct. Officers are now prohibited from engaging “in support of any posting that includes harassment, threats of violence, or similar conduct.” That includes making, commenting or sharing such posts.
Once Wednesday’s version is finalized, review board president Eric Jackson will sign and then send it to Mina. Jackson said a back-and-forth between the agency and the board is expected before a final conclusion.
“Typically he’ll respond, and we’ll respond to his response,” Jackson said. “At some point our authority ends, but we can still be a voice to push for change, as we have in the past.”