Minnesota Police Facebook Muslim Comments: Rochester Officer Put On Leave After Social Media Posts

After allegedly posting racially offensive remarks on Facebook, a Minnesota police officer was put on administrative leave Friday, the Star Tribune in Minnesota reported. Rochester, Minnesota, police officer Ben Schlag, who has been on the force for five years, allegedly made posts about protesters being hit by a vehicle and Muslims being shot, which have since been removed.

Rochester Police Chief Roger Peterson said he received emails Friday from two groups -- Me to We Racial Healing and Rochester for Justice -- with similar allegations of Schlag’s Facebook posts. One of the posts reportedly read, “Nobody cares about your protest,” accompanied by an illustration of stick figures being chased and hit with a vehicle. The post did not reference a specific protest.

Another ready “studies show that Muslim Radicals are less prone to violence after they’ve been shot in the [expletive] face,” the Star Tribune reported.

Schlag redirected all comments on the situation to the police department, who he said would handle the issue. Peterson said that when he learned of the allegations, he was extremely disappointed, and that it distracts from the good work of the department.

“It is unsettling to imagine how his racism would play out in relationships with other officers, the Rochester community and surrounding areas in engagements that are isolated and/or out of public view,” a letter from Me to We Racial Healing addressed to Peterson read, according to the Star Tribune.

Earlier this month, a police officer in Ohio was put on paid administrative leave after allegedly making a Facebook comment about a Black Lives Matter activist who killed himself on the Ohio Statehouse steps, the Dayton Daily News reported. Lee Cyr, an officer with the Fairborn, Ohio police department, reportedly commented “Love a happy ending” on the post of a story of the death of MarShawn McCarrel, an activist with Black Lives Matter, a social justice movement that tries to bring attention to the police killings of African-Americans.

Last week, a St. Paul police officer resigned after being accused of urging people on Facebook to “run down” Black Lives Matter protesters with their cars, KMSP-TV in Minneapolis reported. Officer Jeff Rothecker reportedly made the post around Martin Luther King Day, and later issued an apology for the post.