A Detroit Police Department detective has been demoted and an internal investigation has been launched after his Facebook post deriding the Black Lives Matter movement went viral and drew harsh public criticism.

Detective Nathan Weekley of the Detroit Police Department has been busted back to ordinary officer, losing his gold shield for something he posted on Facebook. Katrease Stafford of the Detroit Free Press writes:

Chief James Craig identified the detective as Nathan Weekley, the brother of Officer Joseph Weekley, who fatally shot 7-year-old Aiyana Stanley-Jones during a police raid in 2010. All charges including a felony charge of involuntary manslaughter and a separate misdemeanor charge were dropped against Joseph Weekley after two mistrials. "I became aware the night of the posting on social media," Craig said Monday. "And once becoming aware of it I notified my team so we could have a discussion. And based on the preliminary discussion assessment of it, Detective Weekley has been de-appointed down from the ranking of detective to police officer and he has been reassigned and we have opened an internal investigation into the matter."

Here is what he wrote and later deleted:

For the first time in my nearly 17 years as a law enforcement officer, I contemplated calling into work in response to the outrageous act perpetrated against my brothers[.] ... It seems like the only response that will demonstrate our importance to society as a whole. The only racists here are the piece of s--t Black Lives Matter terrorists and their supporters.

We certainly hear such sentiments from both sides in even stronger terms. But Weekley is a representative of the DPD, which must interact with angry supporters of BLM every day.

Sarah Larrimore of the Washington Post garnered outraged rections to the post from, among others, a representative of Al Sharpton’s National Action Network. (I suppose Sharpton’s people are presumed to know about inflammatory rhetoric, because Al agitated against “outside interlopers” in Harlem shortly before Freddie’s Fashion Mart there was attacked by arsonists, with loss of life.)

“In these times, we believe that the chief should take swift and direction action,” the Rev. Charles Williams II, president of the Michigan chapter of the National Action Network, told The Washington Post in a phone interview Monday. “So we’re glad that the chief has decided to demote him, and he will not be on the streets of Detroit. However, this type of talk should be no-tolerance, especially in light of what we’ve seen happen across the country.”

“We don’t want to see a vacation, we don’t want to see administrative leave … we want to see termination,” Williams said. “If that means that the city of Detroit has to fight the union, then that just means the city of Detroit should fight the union.”

Raw Story bluntly headlines:

Detroit detective rants about ‘piece of sh*t Black Lives Matter terrorists’ — and only gets demoted

Weekley has lots of due process protections and presumably has the union behind him. This story will play out over time, and it represents another milestone in the story of the alienation of cops.

screen grab via Raw Story