In December 2014, a Chattanooga police officer rebuffed a local activist’s Facebook criticism by arguing that because the man had never been a police officer, he had no right to complain.
Turns out, that’s been a common argument among officers online in a post-Ferguson United States, according to a new report by a San Francisco consulting company.
The company, Monitor 360, analyzed 3,000 public posts on the website officer.com between December 2014 and January 2015 and discovered that 33 percent of them included some sort of notion that average civilians have no idea what it takes to be a police officer and that “civilians just don’t get it.”
Chattanooga Police Chief Fred FletcherThe report identified five major narratives among the posts, including the idea that there is an anti-cop bias in the media, that race-baiters are manufacturing conflict and that officers are targets and need to be prepared.
In all, about two-thirds of all posts on the website — where posters can self-identify as officers but aren’t required to prove they are officers to comment — were defensive and frustrated, according to the report.