(@noone_you_know/Twitter)

A while back, the internet troll website 4Chan decided to have a little fun. They managed to convince a large group of people on the left that the hand gesture for “OK” was a white supremacist gesture.

Since then, virtually everyone they disagree with making the gesture has been labeled a racist on such flimsy evidence.

Now, a number of Alabama police officers have been suspended for making a similar gesture.

David O’Mary, mayor of Jasper, Alabama, suspended four police officers after a photo of the officers went viral after some local residents said that the cops were making hand gestures to signify white power and supremacy. What are the details? The photo in question, which was published in the Daily Mountain Eagle, featured several police officers who were instrumental in successfully carrying out a drug bust on a repeat offender. O’Mary was pictured in the paper along with the officers. The officers said they found crystal meth, crack cocaine, powder cocaine, and heroin during the bust. In the photo, at least four of the Jasper officers can be seen making an “OK” sign on their legs with their fingers. A Twitter user pointed out the hand gesture, calling them “white nationalist hand signs.” In a tweet, the user wrote, “Jasper, AL police making white nationalist hand signs. Many faces are visible. Please help ID.”

In other words, someone went off half-cocked and wants to dox these officers who had also just helped make a significant drug bust. Does anyone else see how that could work another way?

Here’s the tweet in question:

Here’s the thing, though. Those aren’t even OK signs. Sure, it looks like them, but it’s not.

It’s the Circle Game.

For those of you unfamiliar with the game, it’s a rather juvenile game played by all kinds of people, but it’s often popular with military and law enforcement. The goal of the game is to make a circle with your forefinger and thumb, typically hold it somewhere below the waist, and get people to look at it. In real life, you get to punch the “looker” in the arm, but thanks to the internet, you can get entire swaths of people to look, which has its own brand of humor.

I was first exposed to this game when I was in the Navy and have seen it played off and on since then. Frankly, the kind of officers who would be driven to kick-in doors on a drug raid are the kind of guys who would play this game to some extent.

In other words, it’s a stupid game and some wanker wants to destroy careers over it.

Not that the mayor cares.

According to Quinn, O’Mary said that he has not spoken to the officers who were suspended and did not ask them what they meant by the gesture. O’Mary reportedly said that it doesn’t matter. “That’s contradictory to how we run our city,” O’Mary said. “That’s not our mindset. That’s not the way we do things and they used poor judgement.” According to the report, the officers will be suspended for two weeks — during one of which they will receive no pay. “We talked to two senior African-American law enforcement officers that are on the City of Jasper’s payroll and they think it’s fair and that’s a pretty good sounding board,” O’Mary added.

No, it’s not fair. It’s not fair because there’s absolutely nothing racist about it and anyone who claims they don’t care is a virtue-signaling moron without a lick of sense in their heads.

Frankly, these officers deserve better than that from the city they serve.