Officer reprimanded for Facebook comment

Cop referred to Parkland massacre as a hoax with paid actors

A conspiracy-theorist cop has been reprimanded for calling the Parkland school massacre a hoax — and the students “paid actors” instead of survivors.

Ericson Harrell, a North Miami Beach officer who lives in Sunrise, also has been ordered to forfeit 40 hours of pay for unbecoming conduct, which means he misses out on about $1,500, according to police records released Tuesday.

An internal affairs investigation began in April after inquir-

ies began from the South Florida Sun Sentinel. And Harrell’s social-media posts subjected the agency to a wave of negative attention, the police department said.

Harrell is “going to rethink about what he posts” going forward, a spokesman said. “The city of North Miami Beach will continue serving its residents with respect and integrity,” said police spokesman Maj. Richard Rand.

Harrell, who had been reassigned to administrative restricted duty, has been returned to road patrol. Harrell posted controversial Facebook posts, including ones that doubted whether the Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School massacre on Feb. 14 happened. He referred to student activists as “paid actors.”

During the internal affairs investigation, Harrell told his agency he didn’t believe Nikolas Cruz was the shooter in the massacre at the high school, but investigators noted that Cruz confessed to the crime.

A review of Harrell’s

2017 posts also shows he questioned other massacres, such as the 2012 Sandy Hook Elementary School shooting deaths in Newtown, Conn. He used hashtags on posts such as “#SandyHookHoax.” He wrote the attacks of Sept.

11, 2001, were an “inside job.” He suggested that British bomb victims at a

2017 Ariana Grande concert were actors: “what movie stage is this being filmed on? ‘Victims’ yeeeah Riiiiight.”

He also had posted a video about the Holocaustera Auschwitz death camp that claims the tour guides there are told to tell lies.

Harrell could not be reached for comment at the agency Tuesday.

Personnel files show Harrell, an officer with the city since December 1998, earns more than $78,000 a year.

Harrell was cleared of a second violation, which was labeled “inattention to detail as a result of personal admissions on social media.” That investigation began because he had said on a YouTube video that he doesn’t arrest people for victimless crimes.

He had come under scrutiny before for controversial posts. Records show he was suspended for 40 hours in 2016 after sending YouTube videos to other police employees about an alleged government conspiracy involving the attacks of Sept. 11.

And while Harrell was arrested in Plantation in 2013 for a one-man protest against Obamacare, and the state attorney office’s did not prosecute, he still was docked 20 hours pay for violating three internal policies. That included having a membership in an activist group that supports “interference with the established government.”

Investigators at the time also said he spent “excessive amounts of time” on Facebook, YouTube and conspiracy theory-related websites “during work hours.”

Harrell’s file also has numerous commendations and officer of the month honors. Harrell is credited with catching a teenage burglary suspect, and catching “three violent offenders who had just terrorized three citizens in two cities.”

He once kept two robbery suspects at gunpoint while he waited for backup. And he received the Silver Medal of Valor in 2011 for his “alertness, bravery and dedication” to duty when he helped arrest two armed felons robbing a T-Mobile, according to records.