Harrisburg police on Friday fired a cadet who was going through the police academy after learning the man posted racist and inappropriate comments on social media, Mayor Eric Papenfuse said.
The city received reports Thursday night that one of its police cadets had posted inappropriately on Twitter, Papenfuse said. Police immediately investigated and determined the allegations to be accurate, he said. The city then terminated their offer to the cadet and pulled him from the academy.
The posts in question were “racist and inappropriate,” Papenfuse said and the account had not been previously disclosed to the city during his vetting process, as required by the city’s strict social-media policy.
Instead, the Twitter page was listed under a different name, Papenfuse said.
“This account was not previously disclosed,” he said. “I hope this will be an example of the swift and decisive action that can be taken by the city, which will not tolerate racism in the any form, especially airing of clearly unacceptable views on social media.”
Neither the city nor police department would release the cadet’s name, age or any identifying information. City officials also would not reveal the specific content posted on Twitter, but Papenfuse said it went beyond liking and retweeting offensive posts.
The recruit had been hired in January as part of the city’s latest class of police officers, but his class had been put on hold in March when the training academy shut down due to the pandemic. The academy had recently started back up again but was about eight weeks from finishing.
The firing comes five days after a Dauphin County jail guard was suspended after county officials said he posted remarks about protests in Harrisburg Saturday night “advocating for excessive force” at the rally.
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