Following damaging revelations in Seattle that a female police officer made racist remarks in online media, including Facebook, prior to pulling a gun on an elderly African American pedestrian using a golf club for a cane, policeone.com made all comment forums private and restricted them to registered users only on Tuesday, February 10. This came after numerous racist and violent Policeone comments came to light and were posted to twitter during the recent unrest across the country over police brutality and shootings.

Instead of moderating forums or encouraging temperate speech as a means of ‘cleaning house’, the response at Policeone has been to hide problematic speech from “the wrong people” (aka the public and defense attorneys).

On the last day before Policeone made the change, comments on the female Seattle officer message board trended heavily towards outrage that she was being disciplined for 1. Making racist comments on a public forum 2. Arresting an African American man for no apparent reason and 3. Having been caught lieing about the arrest when her car cam failed to corroborate any of her allegations.

Comments on the site overwhelmingly blamed the Seattle Chief of Police for “throwing another officer under the bus”.

Secrecy wins again.