Cop Facebook Posts Raise Eyebrows

City cop Jason Bandy wants the public to know that lying politicians exaggerated the impact of Covid-19 in order to crack down on individual freedom.

And that the media ignore elite-run child sex trafficking rings connected to the Vatican and CIA. And that one Black female Democratic Congresswoman is ​“trash,” while another should be ​“lock[ed] up.”

Bandy has worked as a city police officer in New Haven for over a decade.

Based on the Independent’s review of just a week’s worth of his public Facebook musings, Bandy’s public declarations map closely onto those expressed by the furthest fringes of the American right.

They come at a time when the role of right-wing extremists in law enforcement has received renewed attention as President Trump dispatches federal agents into Portland to confront ​“anarchists” and pull protesters into unmarked vans, and has threatened to do the same in other cities around the country.

They also join other recent social media postings and group texts by New Haven police and firefighters, as well as by cops, officials, and firefighters in other communities, that have sparked debate over the rights and responsibilities of public-safety personnel. The debate — including a call-out of the New Haven department by the ACLU — balances officers’ First Amendment free speech protections with the impact of their advocacy on their ability to protect and serve an urban community at a time of raging national protests over law enforcement.

“They do align with far-right, extremist anti-government beliefs,” national domestic terrorism analyst and right-wing extremism expert Daryl Johnson said about Bandy’s Facebook posts.

“When you have people that have those types of beliefs, even though they have the First Amendment right to free speech, it does call into question whether these people need to have the authorities that police officers have. It calls into question their judgment and their integrity.”

Bandy declined to comment for this story. He did post a video on Facebook (above) defending himself against allegations of bias or improper behavior. He defended his right to criticize public figures. ​“Who fights for me? I have to fight for myself. Then when you do, you get bashed … because you speak out,” Bandy said. He called this article an example of the left-biased media unfairly ​“putting targets” on people’s backs in an effort to divide the community.

New Haven police union attorney Marshall Segar told the Independent, ​“Union counsel is reviewing the materials. As such, the Union cannot comment at this time.”

Police Chief Otoniel Reyes offered a similar take. ​“I need an opportunity to review the alleged posts,” he told the Independent. ​“The NHPD has clear policies that govern communication on social media. If department polices were violated, we will take appropriate action.”

Conspiracy Theory Enthusiast

Bandy has reposted images, statements, and articles that argue that ​“Covid-19 was planned”; that the government ​“doesn’t actually care about your safety”; and that Covid-19 case counts have been deliberately, artificially inflated in Texas and Florida.

He has posted that Ilhan Omar, a Black female Democratic U.S. representative from Minnesota, should be locked up for allegedly supporting ​“Antifa”; that another Black female Democrat, Maxine Waters, is ​“trash;” and that Democratic presidential candidate Joe Biden is either ​“pandering to Islam … or attempting to implement?” based on a video in which the nominee states that ​“Muslim votes matter.”

Bandy routinely posts about the prevalence of child sex trafficking among elites. About a slow creep towards a cashless society. And about a fascist dictatorship emerging from state government orders to wear masks, maintain social distances, and temporarily shut down parts of the economy in order to stem the spread of Covid-19.

“The job of a politician at this point has become this … Spend every dime they can while stealing most so they can cry that they need federal funding because we don’t have enough money even though we started off with more than enough…They purposely do this,” he wrote in one recent Facebook post.

In another, he shared a picture of Adolf Hitler, accompanied by a quotation from the führer outlining how governments slowly erode their people’s freedoms.

“Stop letting this happen,” he wrote — implicitly comparing current government restrictions around Covid-19 and Nazi Germany.

His Facebook feed — particularly the reposts about elite pedophile conspiracies and widespread political corruption seeking to undermine Donald Trump — echo unfounded postings of the right-wing conspiracy group QAnon.

Indeed, Bandy recently reposted on Facebook a Tweet that used the hashtag #QANON. That reposted message pointed to another Tweet from an Italian model who claimed that ​“the truth of the Hollywood pedophilia is about to come out more vivid than ever.”

The New Haven officer does not shy away from promoting conspiracy theories on his public Facebook page. To the contrary, he embraces it.

He recently reposted an image lambasting CNN for running a ​“hit piece on conspiracy theories.”

“They only talk about what they need to discredit,” he wrote.

Right above that, he posted a list of major U.S. corporations that have allegedly donated millions of dollars in recent weeks to the Black Lives Matter movement.

“This is nothing more than criminal evil elites attempting to purchase/steal an election to keep their crimes hidden and control in tact,” he wrote.

His Facebook posts at times are reminiscent of those that led to the firing of two St. Louis police officers in December 2019.

Bandy’s tenure on the job has seen its fair share of controversies. They started back in 2010 when he was a rookie; one day he called in sick, went out and got drunk, and caused a ruckus at a downtown bar. The department tried unsuccessfully to remove him from the force. Last year top brass tried unsuccessfully to fire him for violating the department’s tattoo policy.

He has managed to weather those storms with the backing of the police union.

Bandy’s recent posts appear to approach, if not outright cross, the line established by the New Haven Police Department in its general order on personal and professional social media use.

“Departmental personnel are free to express themselves as private citizens on social media sites to the degree that their speech does not impair working relationships of this Department for which loyalty and confidentiality are important, impede the performance of duties, impair discipline and harmony among coworkers, or negatively affect the public perception of the Department,” the policy reads in part.

The policy also cautions city police officers that they should assume that their social media speech, whether done on or off the clock, ​“will reflect upon their office and this Department.”

And the policy prohibits ​“forms of speech that ridicule, malign, disparage, or otherwise express bias against any race, color, religion, national origin, age, sex, sexual orientation, gender identity, disability, or any other protected class of individuals.”

Fit To Serve?

Local civil rights attorney John Williams told the Independent that Bandy’s Facebook feed raises a host of questions for him — not just about potential compliance with department policy, but also about Bandy’s mental fitness to serve as a police officer.

Williams referred to a recent post in which Bandy wrote ​“Lock her up” above a meme of U.S. Rep. Omar allegedly spotted at an Antifa rally.

That post raises ​“a reasonable question about whether this officer suffers from inherent bias,” he said, as he is calling for the arrest and detention of of a Black female politician who has not broken any laws.

Williams said that the #QANON repost ​“suggests mental instability. It raises a serious question that would call for a psychiatric evaluation, which the employer has a right to do when the job of an employee is to carry a loaded gun.”

He said Bandy’s Facebook feed is not mere political expression voicing his support for a particular candidate, party, or set of political beliefs. All of that is clearly protected by the First Amendment right to freedom of speech, he said.

These posts, however, get at what Williams said is the key legal question when determining the boundary between a government employee’s free speech and their ability to serve the public. That question, he said, is: ​“Does the speech in question impair the ability of the employee to function effectively in his or her job, whatever that job may be?”

Under one reposted video depicting a Black man at the wheel of a car getting roughed up by a police officer for not cooperating with the officer’s instructions, Bandy wrote that one cannot focus only on the ​“professionalism” of police when evaluating an officer’s use of force.

“[T]here is also something called morals and respect and a lot of society lacks this thinking others need to act professional and they can act however they like,” Bandy wrote. ​“At the end of the day we are adults and if you want to be treated like one than it’s that person responsibility to act like one. Probably the biggest problem in society today is that most don’t.”

“Higher Standard”

DT Analytics owner Daryl Johnson (pictured) agreed with Williams’s analysis of Bandy’s posts.

The New Haven officer’s posts ​“call into question their ability to make accurate judgments,” he said. ​“It has implicit biases towards certain groups of people, which is at odds with what a police department is about, which is instilling trust in the community.”

Johnson is as much of an expert on the rise of and calling cards of right-wing extremism in this country as just about anyone else. Before he started his own consultancy, he worked as a senior domestic terrorism analyst at the U.S. Department of Homeland Security under Republican President George W. Bush and then under Democrat President Barack Obama.

During his time working for the federal government, he oversaw the research and writing of a paper analyzing the rise of right-wing extremism in this country at the time of the Great Recession and Obama’s election and assumption of office. He ultimately resigned from his position after his paper was leaked to the public. Conservative news channels and Congresspeople accused him of targeting people of a specific political persuasion, and the Obama White House left him — and his research — out to dry. (Click here to listen to a recent episode of WBUR’s On Point all about Johnson’s background, his analysis of the current state of right-wing extremism, and his new book, ​“Hateland: A Long, Hard Look at America’s Extremist Heart”.)

Johnson stressed to the Independent that the issue of Bandy’s Facebook feed — like those of other police officers called out for posting controversial content on personal social media accounts— is not a criminal matter.

“This is an administrative matter,” he said. ​“This person’s character has been called into question because of his beliefs. I believe that people who hold these kinds of extreme views are a liability to the department.” Someone could file a civil suit against him and accuse the department of discrimination based on these posts, he said.

Johnson said that people who have a badge and a gun and specialized training and authority must be held to ​“a higher standard of personal character.

“For far too long, I believe police departments have swept this issue under the rug and ignored it, when they should start looking at how this person’s beliefs affect their ability to be a police officer.”

“Good Morning Hate Spewers”

Unrelated to Bandy’s posts, another current member of the NHPD took to Facebook to rebuke recent police accountability protests — and in turn elicited a sharp critique from the state chapter of the American Civil Liberties Union.

On the morning of July 15, the day after the city saw a surge in gun violence that included four shootings and two homicides, NHPD Det. Bridget Brosnahan reposted a public post from People Against Police Brutality leader Kerry Ellington.

Ellington’s post called for the defunding of the police, and outlined how she believed the $40 million-plus that make up the police budget could be better spent.

Brosnahan wrote in her repost, ​“This is what I’m talking about… the leader of the protesters.”

Soon thereafter, Brosnahan took to Facebook again to write another post.

“Hey good morning hate spewers a.k.a. protesters against police,” she wrote in part. ​“YOUR city is on fire, a.k.a. people are shooting each other in your community, and I don’t see you anywhere. If you think the gangbangers have not taken on your attitude because they’ve watched you, they’ve listen [sp.] to you, and they have now taken on your attitude towards the police and think that they can just do anything because we have no power, you’re wrong again. Do you remember when you yelled at us for 10 hours and spewed hate for 10 hours in our faces and you wanted to get rid of us because you wanted to police your own community where are you now??? WHERE THE FCK ARE YOU?? This is not a message to peaceful protesters who just want to exercise their right for change in their community.”

Other city police officers, most of them retired, posted in the comment section under her post with their own reactions to Ellington’s critique.

“What a fucking imbecile,” Marco Francia wrote.

“And the looting hasn’t even started yet,” wrote Fred Hurley.

“The police aren’t your problem stupid, YOU are. Grow up,” wrote former police union President Arpad Tolnay.

“A simple shut the fuck up and sit your dumb ass down would do…” wrote Rob Levy Sr.

Southern Connecticut State University Associate Professor of Sociology Cassi Meyerhoffer posted on the thread that the current and retired officers’ comments reflected a lot of ​“internalized white supremacy.”

Brosnahan responded by asking Meyerhoffer to ​“please name one strong black leader, alive, who is trying to help the communities who are killing each other.”

Later in that same thread, the detective defended her comments, and herself, as not racist. “[T]hat’s hilarious because I have no bias toward anyone and you can ask anyone,” she wrote. ​“I am asking you to name one black leader who is trying to help the community on a local level with fighting the crime against their own community members. I am asking you and you can’t answer it. I know, but you do not.”

Brosnahan later deleted the entire Facebook post, including the comments posted underneath.

On Friday, the ACLU of Connecticut reposted on Instagram an annotated version of Brosnahan’s original post.

The ACLU wrote that Brosnahan’s post included ​“classic examples of techniques the political machine of policing often uses to try to discredit and intimidate people calling for *any* change (small or big.)”

Those techniques included equating criticism of the police with a threat, reinforcing the distance between the communities police officers belong to and the ones they work in, using racist dog whistles like ​“gangbanger,” and claiming that police are relatively powerless when in fact they hold a phenomenal amount of power and authority.

Williams and Johnson were less severe in their criticism of Brosnahan’s post.

“I’m willing to make exceptions for people who say something at the spur of the moment, a flippant remark,” and then realize their mistake, he said. He said that Brosnahan’s deletion of her original post is likely a reflection of remorse, or at least a recognition that that was not an appropriate public comment for a police officer to make.

“I think that comment was borne more out of frustration and the tremendous pressure police are under.”

Williams said Brosnahan’s post struck him as a ​“very close question” as to whether or not it crossed the bounds of impairing a police officer’s ability to do their job. ​“Is it ill-advised? Yes. Does it suggest a lack of good judgment? Absolutely. But does it cross the line into disciplinary action? That’s a very difficult case to answer.”

“You Must Act And Conduct Yourself In A Public Fashion”

People Against Police Brutality’s Kerry Ellington (pictured) argued that these police officer social media posts reflect something more than the individual musings, pent-up frustrations, and personal biases of particular officers.

She said they show how policing as it currently exists — in New Haven, and throughout the country — is structurally not invested in serving Black and Brown communities.

“To have white officers who come into Black communities and have that violent mindset, that ignorant mindset, directly demonstrates why our community is calling to divert funding from the police department and into city services and social services that will really keep our community safe,” she told the Independent

“On paper, we say that police protect and serve the community. This is a clear example that that is not the case.”

She said these posts by Bandy, Brosnahan, and various retired and current police officers under Brosnahan’s initial comment should not be seen as simply First Amendment-protected free speech.

“When you make a public post and you’re a public servant, and you get paid by taxpayers, you must act and conduct yourself in a public fashion,” she said.

The department’s social media policy clearly states that officers should assume that their personal posts will be perceived as — and will reflect upon — the police department in its official capacity. So even if an officer is protected by the Constitution to post just about whatever they’d like, their employer should not condone such speech if and when it publicly impairs that employee’s ability to do their job.

Ellington said she sees these Facebook posts as of a piece with top brass’s recent comments about police accountability criticism affecting officer morale and police-community relations, and with the vociferous pushback by police union leaders from throughout the state against new proposed legislation that would strip officers of qualified immunity.

She said this attitude indicates that ​“we deserve the violence that is happening currently in New Haven, all because we want to be critical. Because we want to name the violence of policing.”

When asked what consequences she would like to see these particular officers face for their Facebook posts, she said, ​“At this point, I wouldn’t trust the authenticity of a response. For me, this speaks to what our community is saying: Which is that this system of policing is dysfunctional. That this system of policing does not keep us safe.”