At the end of a trip to South Florida on Friday, Vice President Mike Pence posed for photos with a group of local SWAT team members who had protected him during the visit. They were shared on Twitter, where among the officers’ green uniforms, a red and black patch on Sgt. Matt Patten’s tactical vest stood out: a bold letter Q and the phrase “Question the Narrative.”

The online followers of QAnon, a pro-Trump fringe movement that promotes baseless conspiracy theories about government secrets and clandestine plots, took notice and shared the photo. So did their anonymous leader, Q.

“It’s spreading,” Q wrote.

[Confused? Read our in-depth explainer on the QAnon conspiracy theory.]

While the movement’s loosely connected group of supporters embraced the moment, Sergeant Patten’s employer, the Broward County Sheriff’s Office, viewed it as an embarrassment. On Monday, the sheriff’s office said it had reprimanded him, removed him from the SWAT team and reassigned him to a new department.

“Sergeant Patten’s actions of displaying unity with a controversial group not in alignment with the core values of the law enforcement and the Broward Sheriff’s Office discredited the agency, the county and himself,” a sheriff’s office supervisor wrote in a disciplinary report.