When you’re a cop, it may be okay to think that people who need to use food stamps to buy their groceries are “useless lazy turd bags.” But it’s not okay to say so on Facebook . And also, oh yeah — it’s not okay to say that you plan to go on a killing spree starting in a grocery store where all those “useless lazy turd bags” shop to feed their families.
Marlin, Texas, cop Rob Douglas (pictured above right) learned that lesson the hard way Wednesday when he was handed a pink slip by Marlin Police Chief Darrell Allen over a vein-popping Facebook tirade against people who need food stamps posted by Douglas recently.
“The decision was made based on the violation of (the) department’s rules of conduct and social media policies,” said Marlin City Manager R.C. Fletcher in The Waco Tribune . “Those inappropriate and troubling comments he made on Facebook resulted in the conditions that actually were outlined in those policies.”
“This is something we just can’t tolerate,” Chief Allen told TV station KWTX .
Marlin a small city of about 6,000 in eastern central Texas.
Douglas, a detective with the Marlin Police for the past five years, took to Facebook recently to voice his anger against people who shop with food stamps, whom he described as having “unclean bodies” and “bling” in their mouths.
In the unhinged rant, Douglas complained that food stamp recipients drive Escalades with “$4,000 rims.”
In reality, 83 percent of all Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) funds — that is, food stamps — go to households that include a child, or an elderly or disabled family member. While eligibility for SNAP is limited to incomes of no more than 130 percent of poverty level, 91 percent of SNAP benefits go to families who earn incomes under the poverty line, and 61 percent of all food stamp recipients earn less than 75 percent of the poverty level.
The average household receiving food stamps has a net monthly income of $338.
“I promise, if I ever snap and go on a killing spree, it will be in a supermarket on the first,” Douglas wrote in his Facebook tirade.
Douglas was placed on administrative leave on Monday after Fletcher was made aware of the offending Facebook post the previous day.
Marlin Police Department policy prohibits “statements or other forms of speech that ridicule, malign, disparage or otherwise express bias against any race, any religion, or any other protected class of individuals.”
Whether people on food stamps are a “protected class” was not specified, but in all likelihood, Douglas’s threat — even if tongue-in-cheek — to massacre people on food stamps sealed his fate with the department.