NYPD Shootings: Facebook Will Not Remove Popular Page Celebrating Officers’ Deaths

The NYPD shootings that left two New York City police officers dead on Saturday afternoon have been a hot-button topic among politicians and civil rights leaders over the last 24 hours.

Naturally, the discussion found its way onto the popular Facebook page “Cop Block,” a hub of close to 1.4 million followers, who devote themselves to policing the police.

On this page — and you don’t have to look very far — there are a number of commenters who received news of dead officers Wenjian Liu and Rafael Ramos with celebration.

“Bout time,” wrote one. “Let us hope it becomes a pattern.”

“Thin the herd,” said another.

And several more I found in less than two minutes.

“When cops start dying at the rate that they kill people I’ll consider sympathy.”

“It ain’t no fun when the rabbit got the gun!!”

“F**k these cops and their supporters.”

“Haha love it”

“The NYPD brought this on themselves with those stupid f**kin shirts*…. One thing the cops have to keep in mind is that the public has more and better guns than the cops. So maybe every d**che bag cop should think about that before they go violating people’s rights.”

“Let me get this straight. Its cool for cops to kill innocent people and laugh about it but, when one of theirs gets killed we’re supposed to give a f**k!? H*** no! For every cop that gets killed theres one hundred cops ready to take their place. Sorry. No f***s given.”

(*Shirts referred to are the “I Can Breathe” counter-protest shirts following Eric Garner’s death.)

Some also shared videos like this one.

If you were having trouble understanding, the protesters were saying, “What do we want? Dead cops! When do we want them? Now!”

Furthermore, a piece of content posted by the page administrators seemed to make light of the deaths. It was a link to rapper The Game sending a message to the NYPD, saying, “I guess y’all ‘can’t breathe’ either” in response to the shirts mentioned above.

I could go on all day and not even touch the tip of the iceberg regarding anti-police sentiment and the callousness surrounding Saturday’s assassinations, but you get the point.

This came to our attention through a Facebook follower, who was highly offended and decided to report the page to the popular social networking site on grounds of hate speech. This is where it gets interesting.

Facebook responded to Cop Block’s handling of the NYPD shootings after a seven-hour wait in which the page was reportedly reviewed for hate speech. This is what they had to say.

“Thank you for taking the time to report something that you feel may violate our Community Standards. Reports like yours are an important part of making Facebook a safe and welcoming environment. We reviewed the Page you reported for containing hate speech or symbols and found it doesn’t violate our Community Standards.”

Neither Facebook nor Cop Block have responded to the Inquisitr’s request for comment at this time. I’ll keep you posted when/if they do.

In the meantime, what do you think about Cop Block and their followers’ reaction to the NYPD shootings? Does it qualify as hate speech or not? Sound off in our comments section.