By Mara H. Gottfried
Pioneer Press
ST. PAUL, Minn. — On the same day a St. Paul police sergeant apologized for a social media comment urging drivers to run over protesters, a Minneapolis organization realized he’d apparently left a similar comment on its Facebook page two months earlier.
Sgt. Jeffrey Rothecker is on paid administrative leave from the police department after posting a comment in response to a Friday article about an upcoming Black Lives Matter protest. In his comments, he referred to protesters as “idiots” and detailed what drivers could do to avoid being charged with a crime if their vehicles struck someone during the march.
He admitted to the post Wednesday, saying in a statement, “I understand that the post was insensitive and wrong.
My poor choice of words conveyed a message I did not intend and am not proud of. Shortly after submitting the post, I re-read it and deleted it. As a law enforcement officer, I would never intentionally encourage someone to commit a crime.”
Rothecker had posted the comment as “JM Roth.” Becky Dernbach, communications director of Neighborhoods Organizing for Change, thought she recognized the name and found it Wednesday in a November comment that had been posted on her group’s Facebook page. She said she had deleted the comment because it called for violence, but she’d taken a screengrab of it first.
The “JM Roth” comment was on a post about protesters shutting down westbound Interstate 94 on Nov. 16, Dernbach said. People protesting the Minneapolis police shooting of Jamar Clark marched onto the freeway and shut it down for about three hours. More than 50 people were arrested.
“JM Roth” wrote on the post, “They should’ve ran them over. Obviously their parents never taught them not to play on the highway. If drivers would’ve just kept driving, any idiot that wants to walk onto the highway and risk getting hit, it’s their fault and not that of the driver. F BLM, Communities United Against Police Brutality (CUAPB) and any others that support what they are doing.”
Neighborhoods Organizing for Change sent a letter to St. Paul Mayor Chris Coleman on Thursday, forwarding the screenshot and calling on the city “to take immediate action by firing this officer as swiftly as possible,” Dernbach said.
On Wednesday, when Dernbach heard Rothecker’s apology about the recent Facebook post and thought about the post from November, she said her reaction was, “This is someone who ... has sworn to serve and protect and he is encouraging potentially deadly violence against peaceful protesters. I found that really chilling. ... Then his apology is about, ‘Oh I didn’t mean it,’ and it seemed extremely disingenuous. This other post reveals a pattern over the course of months ... that it wasn’t a one-off statement.”
Chris Wachtler, attorney for the St. Paul Police Federation, said in a statement Thursday: “This information only came to our attention today. Some investigation on our end is going to be necessary in order for us to comment further. The Federation does not condone promoting illegal activity such as assault.”
The “JM Roth” name is familiar to people who run Twin Cities’ police accountability Facebook pages. He’d “trolled” their pages, calling people names or making defamatory comments, said Michelle Gross, president of Communities United Against Police Brutality and Andrew Henderson, an administrator on Minnesota Cop Block’s page.
“There would be a story on Minnesota Cop Block about a police officer doing something wrong and ‘JM Roth’ would comment something like, ‘You don’t know what you’re talking about. You have no idea what it’s like to be a police officer,’ ” Henderson said. “He would berate them, like, ‘You’re a frickin’ idiot.’ ”
Henderson said he’d believed “JM Roth” was a police officer, but he regarded the comments as free speech and let them be. But things changed for Henderson early Saturday, when he saw a comment from “JM Roth” saying “Run them over” under a Pioneer Press article on Facebook about an upcoming Black Lives Matter protest.
“I was concerned it was him inciting violence rather than just berating people,” Henderson said. He immediately notified the St. Paul Police Department and filed an internal-affairs complaint Sunday, naming Rothecker.
On Tuesday, Henderson said an internal-affairs investigator followed up to ask if he could provide other screenshots of “JM Roth” comments, but he could not because they are no longer on Facebook. Gross, the administrator on three police-accountability Facebook pages, said she previously warned “JM Roth” about his comments and deleted them, to which he’d protested he had a right to free speech. During the Clark protests, Gross said the number of “JM Roth” comments ramped up and she blocked him from the Facebook pages.
“Not everything he wrote was really inflammatory, but a lot of it was, and a lot if it was nasty about Black Lives Matter and calling people names like ‘punks’ or ‘idiots,’ ” Gross said. The internal-affairs investigation into Rothecker is under way.
Asked Thursday about the November Facebook comment from “JM Roth,” police spokesman Steve Linders said, “I can’t talk about the specifics of the investigation, but I imagine any new information would certainly be part of it.”
Linders also said that anyone who has concerns about an officer’s conduct -- whether on or off duty -- can report it to the Police-Civilian Internal Affairs Review Commission at 651-266-5583.
The Nov. 16 Facebook post included other comments from “JM Roth.”
One man had responded to “JM Roth’s” initial assertion that it wouldn’t be the driver’s fault if protesters were struck, posting, “That’s false. I think you need to brush up on Minnesota traffic law.”
“JM Roth” responded, “Actually, no it’s not false. That’s why there are signs near on-ramps that state no pedestrian traffic. That’s why those protesters were arrested for pedestrians on a freeway and unlawful assembly. Time for you to bone up on MN traffic laws.”
The other man replied, “It still would’ve been illegal to hit them with your car.”
“JM Roth” then posted, “Nope, as long as you stop and speak with police it is not illegal. So try again.”
Dernbach said in light of violence that has occurred against protesters, the comments were especially disturbing.
On Nov. 23, five protesters were injured in a shooting outside the Minneapolis police department’s 4th Precinct during a demonstration over the Clark case. Prosecutors have charged four people, saying their actions were racially motivated and they had gone to the protest to stir things up.
In a November 2014 march outside a police station on Minneapolis’ Lake Street over a shooting death by a Ferguson, Mo., officer, a St. Paul man’s car struck a 16-year-old protester. Jeffrey Patrick Rice told police his car had been damaged by a large group of people while he was trying to flee a mob, according to an initial police report. Rice, 41, pleaded guilty to failure to yield to a pedestrian; the teen sustained a minor leg injury.
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