The president of a Brevard County chapter of the Fraternal Order of Police has apologized for a Facebook post inviting police officers from Buffalo and Atlanta to work in Florida.
Officers in those cities have been involved in violent incidents during protests in the last few weeks.
The post – now deleted – singled out officers from Atlanta and Buffalo who have recently resigned or been disciplined, saying, “we are hiring in Florida” and “we got your back” with the hashtag #LawandorderFlorida.
Two officers in Buffalo have been charged with assault after a video showed them shoving a 75-year-old protester to the ground. Six officers in Atlanta are facing charges over their involvement in the arrest of two college students.
A separate post extended the same invitation to police officers from Minneapolis.
The Brevard County FOP Facebook posts prompted criticism from Sheriff Wayne Ivey, who said they were “extremely distasteful and insensitive to current important and critical issues that are occurring across our country.”
On Monday the FOP’s chapter president Bert Gamin posted an apology on Facebook, calling the original posts “insensitive and wrong.”
“I let my emotions and frustration get the better of me as a result of all the continually negative media portrayals of law enforcement,” he wrote.
By Tuesday morning the apology had also been removed from the Facebook page, but hundreds of people have continued to post comments about the original post.
