Chief uses social media to fight back against anti-cop posts

By Police1 Staff

OXFORD, Ala. — A police chief is using social media to fight back against false claims made about his officers.

Police Chief Bill Partridge told Alabama Media Group that his new policy against inflammatory social media posts will be to post video of the interaction for the public to see. The change came after a citizen complained on Facebook about an interaction with one of his officers.

The department’s animal control officer responded to a dog running at large call Thursday. After locating the dog, the officer went to speak to the owner because it was at least the third time police were called to the home on similar complaints, the publication reported.

Shortly after the officer left, the owner posted that he was almost “shot in my own yard by Officer J. Caldwell.”

“HE BEAT MY DOOR DOWN OVER A DOG,” the man wrote. “He’s the animal control officer and he’s a lying individual. Yes I have video but if I post it, it won’t do anything but raise racial tensions.”

After watching the body camera video, Partridge saw his officer was calm and didn’t make any threats. Partridge decided to post the full video on Facebook. 

“I am tired of false complaints being brought to the department in an attempt to get out of a traffic charge or criminal charge," he wrote.

Partridge said people will put a phone in an officer’s face in the hopes of antagonizing them and then edit it to make the officer look bad.

"These people need to realize they're not going to get away with it. All they're trying to do is deflect what they're doing wrong. It's always law enforcement's fault. Nobody wants to take responsibility for their actions," he said.

He said if one of his officers does something wrong, he’ll handle that as well because it’s a “two-way street.”