Anyone who knows me or is friends with me on Facebook knows I enjoy a somewhat lively and spirited debate with people who are of a different mindset than my own. Monday was no different.

I was going back and forth with a gentleman by the name of Mr David Hastings about a particular comment he made involving Black Lives Matter. Mr Hastings and myself had a mutual Facebook friend by the name of Ramond Curtis, who is a current GS Student. In this comment he identified himself as a police officer and was gracious enough to give us a four-point lesson on how not to be killed by him when he was on duty.

Mr Hastings was a part-time police officer for the Bethel Heights Police Department in Arkansas. His comments were shocking and frankly pretty terrifying coming from a person who is charged with the protection of people in his community. After I had disengaged from speaking to him he replied to another comment I had made in the same thread with a statement even more shocking and terrifying than the previous one.

That comment was so over the top that Ramond decided to share a screenshot of the conversation. I quickly followed suit, also sharing Ramond’s screenshot for everyone to see. When I asked Ramond why he decided to share it later on he said:

“It’s about dealing with an issue that we are facing as a nation. If that means that some people are found not fit to work for the police department and carry a gun and make those kinds of snap decisions about someone else’s life, then so be it.”

The outrageous nature of Mr Hastings comment began to garner a lot of attention among people who were able to view our posts. So much so, that another GS student, Vida Biggins, also took screen shots of the conversation, made a post containing them, and then shared to the Facebook page of Civil Rights Activist and Senior Justice Writer for the New York Daily News, Shaun King. King has gained much notoriety in the past few years by being extremely vocal about the killings of unarmed people of color by the police and an outspoken advocate of the Black Lives Matter movement. King then shared the post, this time tagging the department that Mr Hastings worked for directly.

Since that happened, Vida’s post has been shared over 1300 times and counting!

I even had a friend, we’ll call her Queen C, inform me that she had called his department directly to report his offensive and downright racist comments on Facebook. A short while later, the Bethel Heights Police Department posted this message on their Facebook page:

And a short time after that, the Bethel Heights Police Department announced on their Facebook page that Mr Hastings had been terminated as a part-time police officer with their department:

The news of Mr Hastings termination was picked up by news agencies in the Bethel Heights area and was even the leading story on the evening news. Both Vida and Ramond were interviewed for the story.

Police officers have extremely difficult jobs and are vital to helping keep many communities safe. I have great respect for those who go out every day to protect and serve the communities they live in. This is probably because my father is a police officer and has been for over 30 years. The way he served the community I grew up in is the standard to which I hold all public servants. Because of this, when I see police officers who are not in line with that standard I believe it is our duty to speak out and hold them accountable. This is especially important with the disproportionate amount of unarmed people of color being killed by police officers in this country. It is important when you see or hear things like this from people who are sworn to protect you to not remain silent. You just may keep someone from getting hurt.

Even though I think the termination of Mr Hastings was a positive and extremely necessary step in holding public servants, especially police officers, accountable for making biased and outright racist statements, I found no pleasure in watching him lose his job. I felt sad for our country that in 2016 we still have to worry about whether people who protect us have an implicit bias against people of color. Harboring overtly racist ideas like the ones he displayed made him unfit for duty as a police officer and may have served to endanger people of color in the community he had sworn to protect. Hopefully this serves as an example and a warning that the bias displayed by Mr Hastings will not be tolerated by our public servants.

@geneaiken03