When Chattanooga area law enforcement leaders took to social media Wednesday to speak out against the actions of a Minneapolis police officer that resulted in the death of George Floyd, they didn’t expect the tweets to reach so many people. But with such a large audience, so has come scrutiny from some calling the tweets hypocritical and pointing to local departments’ own cases of alleged police brutality.
Floyd, 46, died after being handcuffed and pinned for several minutes beneath Minneapolis police Officer Derek Chauvin’s knee. A widely circulated video shows Chauvin, who is white, holding Floyd, who is black, down as Floyd complains he can’t breathe.
Chauvin has now been charged with murder. But days before that, Chattanooga Police Chief David Roddy spoke up on Twitter.
“There is no need to see more video,” Roddy said on Twitter. “There no need to wait to see how “it plays out”. There is no need to put a knee on someone’s neck for NINE minutes. There IS a need to DO something. If you wear a badge and you don’t have an issue with thisturn it in.”
The tweet went viral, with more than 152,000 retweets and 622,000 likes as of Saturday morning.