In case you missed it, apparently, Florida has some attractive police officers. They're so attractive that a photo of them posted on the Gainesville Police Department website went viral. It only contained the smiling faces of three of their officers and didn't appear to be posted in order to draw attention to their appearance; the women of Facebook just happened to notice that they weren't the donut-eaters that we often associate with their profession. And as with all viral posts, a barrage of comments ensued, some of them surprisingly sexual.
If you go back to the original post, you'll find comments that contain the words virile, ovulation-inducing, mouth-watering, and beefy. But what you likely won't find are any comments from African-American women.
For women of color in America, an encounter with a "hot cop" isn't necessarily ovulation-inducing. It typically induces fear. They have been made to fear unlawful arrest, assault, and even death. The department's Facebook post might make you roll your eyes and think, "It was just an innocent post, no harm done." But there is a darkness hiding underneath one of those smiling faces.
After the post went viral, some curious Facebook users found the personal page of Officer Michael Hammill, who was pictured in the center of the viral photo. They went all the way back to some of his posts from 2013 and discovered that he enjoys anti-Semitic jokes so much that they help him sleep at night. One post reads:
"What's the difference between boy scouts and jews? Anybody know? Well it is
because boy scouts come back from their camps."
In another post from 2011, Hamill says that he admires Adolf Hitler for the way he dealt with people he didn't like:
"Stupid people annoy me. Put them in an oven and deal with them the Hitler way. Haha."
If a police officer, who is entrusted with the power to protect all citizens, thinks that putting "stupid people" in ovens is appropriate, it's not a stretch of the imagination to think that he may be capable of assaulting someone of any race he doesn't particularly like.
The Gainesville Police Department responded by putting Hammill on paid leave and promised to "fully investigate the matter." But we likely won't hear about the results of the investigation, and this leaves many wondering how many other police officers' racist views are going undetected.
How do such dangerous beliefs go unnoticed when hiring police officers, and can social media research help us keep the wrong people from being hired to protect us?
