AndrewBlakeTroy, MI – A candidate for a county commission seat in Tennessee went on social media to mock police officers as “angry, trigger happy cops” last week over a feel-good Good Morning America story about a police department adopting a cat.
Rashidah Leverett, who is a candidate 5th District on the Montgomery County Commission, made her post in the comments section of the Good Morning America Facebook page on a story about a Michigan police department that was adopting a cat as its official “police cat.”
The Troy Police Department in Michigan announced in March that if the police department got 10,000 Twitter followers by April, it would adopt a police cat.
That story was picked up by numerous media outlets, including ABC’s Good Morning America.
But not every viewer saw it as the warm fuzzy story it was intended to be.
“Emotional support animals for angry, trigger happy cops? Ummm,” Leverett posted in the comments below the story.
Viewers who understood the good intentions of police cat story challenged Leverett’s post with their own Facebook comments.
“angry, trigger happy cops? That’s quite a flammable assumption,” Deborah Stinson replied to Leverett’s post.
“Just look at the news,” Leverett replied to her.
Dianne Allison posted that she thought Leverett’s post was “quite rude.”
Leverett responded “it’s not your experience of course it’s rude.”
The political candidate posted more than 20 replies trying to defend her statement on the Good Morning America Facebook page.
At one point, she claimed she wasn’t talking about all police officers when she said “angry, trigger happy cops” but “just the emotionally weak ones that go for the gun without self-control.”
Many people chimed in to condemn Leverett’s comments.
Michael Sielicki told Leverett it was statements like hers that made the world a hateful place.
Richard Brian posted that while Leverett didn’t say all cops were angry and trigger happy, she alluded to it.
Doug Donald shared a blistering critique of Leverett’s post. He questioned whether she knew about anything about the Troy Police Department who people would assume was who she was referring to with her comment.
“Do you even know where Troy, Michigan is?” Donald asked. “Spouting off inflammatory nonsense about things you know nothing about…you are on your way to becoming a successful politician.”
Leverett’s primary election is May 1.