https://expo.nola.com/news/g66l-201...d-a-racist-meme-now-hes-the-police-chief.html
https://www.resetera.com/threads/vi...-recruiter-of-white-nationalist-group.106492/
You know, I think there's some connection to them "not having any racial around here" and a police assistant thinking it's cool to post a meme about killing your daughter if she likes a black boy and eventually being promoted to police chief. They killed off and chased away the people of color from that area a long time ago.
Man, Father U C King the police
On July 30, 2017, Welsh – then Estherwood’s assistant police chief – was home scrolling through his Facebook feed on his phone when he stopped at a meme someone posted. He said he doesn’t know who created the meme or the man who posted it. “I probably had 2,000 people on my Facebook,” he said of his since-deleted account.
The meme’s image, which resembles a 1950’s-era illustration, depicts a white woman sitting at the edge of a bathtub full of water. A little girl, also white, is in the tub and the woman – presumably the girl’s mother – has her right hand on the back of the girl’s head, pushing her face under the water.
The image’s caption reads: “WHEN YOUR DAUGHTERS FIRST CRUSH IS A LITTLE NEGRO BOY.”
Welsh shared the post on his Facebook.
“I didn’t really think,” he said in the interview when asked why. “I don’t take it as a racial thing because we don’t have racial around here.”
Welsh shared the post around 7:30 that night in 2017. The next day, he got a call from then Estherwood’s police Chief Ernest Villejoin. Welsh’s post was exploding on social media. People shared it, with some making a connection between the racist meme and the national debate about police use of force involving black people. Angry calls and messages, many from out of town, flooded Estherwood Village Hall and the police department.
Welsh initially rejected the criticism in subsequent Facebook posts.
“People always want to play the. Race Card,” he wrote on Facebook, according to widely shared screenshots. “They want you to think your the bad guy.”
In another post that same day he wrote: “Its not against the. Law if you share stuff on. Facebook. Its. Social media. Internet.”
Oh yeah, it's so unbelievable *jerk off motion* These cops KNOW they use the internet to recruit other white supremacistsEven the pro-law enforcement online newsletter, Blue Lives Matter, wrote about Welsh.
“There are a lot of jokes which aren’t politically correct and play off of racial stereotypes, and there are a lot of jokes that draw false accusations of racism,” author Christopher Masterson wrote in the newsletter. “This wasn’t one of them. The racist message was clear as day and it’s almost unbelievable that an officer thought it was OK to post it.”
https://www.resetera.com/threads/vi...-recruiter-of-white-nationalist-group.106492/
With his typed resignation letter in hand, Welsh appeared before Estherwood’s mayor and three-member village board a few days after his Facebook post. What happened next depends on who you ask.
Anthony Borill was mayor of Estherwood at the time. In a recent interview, he said that while the council did not want to accept Welsh’s resignation, he felt the decision was Villejoin’s alone to make.
“I told Ernest, it’s your department,” recalled Borill, whose term as mayor ended this past January. “I backed the chief. His opinion is the one that counts.”
The way Welsh remembered things, it was Borill who first rejected his resignation, telling colleagues at the board meeting, “‘This is our town. This is bulls--- what’s going on. If they don’t like it, they can come to our town and complain. I’m the mayor. I’m taking this.’”
Whichever way things unfolded, Welsh never resigned from the department. Instead, he said, he was suspended without pay for two weeks.
“I was surprised,” said Welsh, who expected he’d be asked to resign. “I figured they’d say that would be the best thing with all the heat we were getting.”
The spotlight on Estherwood eventually faded. Then, in the spring of last year, Villejoin resigned as police chief, and Borill tapped Welsh to serve as acting police chief for the nine months left in Villejoin’s term. Last November, Welsh put his name on the ballot to be police chief.
He faced no opposition, and thus was automatically elected.
“It’s disturbing to me,” said Lisa Graybill, deputy legal director at the Southern Poverty Law Center, the Alabama-based non-profit advocacy group. In reference to Welsh’s Facebook post, she added, “I’m sorry to know a public official would put that out and he didn’t resign – he’s been elevated. People of color should be wary to come through that town or do business in that town.”
Michael McClanahan, president of the Louisiana NAACP, said Welsh’s rise to police chief was troubling, but not surprising.
“What I take from all of this is when I go through that little town, I better be doing five miles below the speed limit, and I better go through there in the day time and not darkness,” he said. “And tell all my family the same. Don’t stop at no store, just go through there and keep going.”
NOLA.com | The Times-Picayune reviewed hundreds of pages of police reports, traffic tickets and municipal citations issued by the Estherwood Police Department between 2016-18 and found no apparent pattern of racial discrimination. For example, out of 381 tickets – many traffic violations – written by Estherwood police officers last year, 300 were issued to white people.
“Whoever breaks the law gets stopped. Whoever gets in a fight gets arrested,” Welsh said. “I don’t care who you are.”
Welsh printed out a screenshot of the racist meme that ignited the controversy – the one of the mother seemingly drowning her daughter – and another one of his Facebook profile page; both were widely circulated on social media. He keeps them in a manila folder in the police department’s small office inside village hall, just down from the room where the town’s board meetings are held.
He retrieved them during the interview in February, and noted that people who spread them after he became an Internet lighting rod didn’t crop out the cover photo of his three young grandchildren, which he considered a blatant invasion of his privacy.
Welsh wants people to know he’s an honest and religious man who just wants to keep his hometown safe. He said he’s sorry for how the meme he shared caused many people to think of Estherwood as a racist community. He said he’s sorry for sharing it as a police officer. Yet, even when repeatedly questioned, he doesn’t seem to fully grasp why people think it was wrong.
“This part could be considered racist,” he said, pointing to the meme’s caption. “That’s what people are telling me. I don’t think it is, because we don’t have that problem here. It don’t mean that to me. It’s just something somebody said, like a joke.”
You know, I think there's some connection to them "not having any racial around here" and a police assistant thinking it's cool to post a meme about killing your daughter if she likes a black boy and eventually being promoted to police chief. They killed off and chased away the people of color from that area a long time ago.
Man, Father U C King the police
