Troopers Demoted For Photo Showing KKK Costume

[OhioChick]

POSTED: 8:54 am EDT April 13, 2008
UPDATED: 9:28 am EDT April 13, 2008

SANDUSKY, Ohio -- A photograph nearly cost some Ohio State Highway Patrol troopers their jobs, NewsChannel5 reported.

Three officers at the Sandusky Post were investigated over the picture. The Jan. 20 photo shows officer Craig Franklin dressed in a handmade Ku Klux Klan-like outfit. He was wearing a white cone on his head, white paper mask with eye holes and a white cloth covering his shoulders.

Franklin, a 12-year veteran, was demoted and reassigned to the Fremont Post. He took a five day suspension, must go through diversity awareness training. He is not allowed to have any more violations for the next two years or he will be fired.

Sgt. Eric Wlodarsky took the photograph. He was suspended, demoted and reassigned to the Norwalk Post. He must go to diversity awareness training. If he has anymore violations during the two years, he will be terminated, officials said.

Franklin and Wlodarsky told an investigator that the picture was taken as a joke while both were on duty. They said it was modeled after a television skit by comedian Dave Chappelle.

Both men were spared termination because of their contracts.

Sgt. Jason Demuth, who received the e-mailed the photo, was also suspended. He will remain at the Norwalk post.

Highway patrol officials began an investigation after the patrol's Administrative Investigative Unit received an anonymous letter that included two photographs of Franklin in the outfit.

http://www.newsnet5.com/news/15868748/detail.html

I wonder if that "diversity awareness training" will help? :sarcasm:

[frogcycle]

1. of course that "diversity awareness training" will help

it will give him ideas for his next madcap adventure

[Catch22Dem]

2. If it's the chappelle skit I'm thinking of,

it was fucking hilarious...when Chappelle did it.

[Captain Angry]

3. Once again, it's intent.

If they were pretending to be the black white supremacist, without malice, they probably need to be talked to about screwing around on duty or in uniform. But yeah, that was a great skit.

How many bored police / security personnel kill somebody every year because they start playing quickdraw with their partner with what they thought had been an unloaded weapon? There used to be at least one or two injuries like that every year at the Air Force Base I lived on in the 80's.

[krispos42]

4. The black, white supremist?

I remember that one, it was great!


It makes me thing of a scene in "See No Evil, Hear No Evil", when the blind man played by Richard Pryor goes "You mean I'm not white???"

:-)