One of the hot cops from the Gainesville Police Department’s viral selfie is currently under fire, both from his department and from the public, for offensive jokes he allegedly posted to his Facebook account.
The Gainesville Sun received screenshots of Facebook posts where Officer Michael Hamill, 28, made jokes about Jews and dealing with those who abuse government resources “the Hitler way” on his personal page.
Pictured left to right: Officer Nordman, Officer Hamill, and Officer Rengering
Hamill, along with Officers Nordman and Rengering, went viral after taking a selfie during their Hurricane Irma relief efforts. CBS News reports the post was shared almost 300,000 times and was flooded with comments from women who found them good-looking, or as one commenter called them, “hunkapotumuses.”
Things quickly turned sour when Hamill’s old Facebook posts, which he posted before joining the GPD, resurfaced earlier this week.
The first distasteful joke to surface was made in April 2013 and read, “Who knew that reading Jewish jokes before I go to bed would not only make me feel better about myself but also help me to sleep better as well? Here is one for everybody, ‘What’s the difference between boy scouts and Jews? Anybody know? Well it is because ‘Boy Scouts come back from their camps.’”
Someone who commented on the original post called the joke “messed up,” to which Hamill replied, “u don’t like it? Don’t read it then.”
But the scandal didn’t stop there. Another post of Hamill’s surfaced shortly after, once again putting Hamill in the spotlight, this time for his apparent neo-Nazism rather than his good looks, according to the New York Post.
“So I find it funny that people will talk about how our government needs to do something about our economy and in reality it’s YOU who needs to stop taking advantage of our system and get a life and do something with your life,” Hamill wrote in the 2011 Facebook post. “Gotta love reality when it hits you in the face. Stupid people annoy me. Put them in an oven and deal with them the Hitler way. Haha.”
GPD spokesman Ben Tobias said the department is reviewing a complaint lodged against Hamill for his anti-Semitic and neo-Nazi comments. Tobias said in a statement acquired by the Sun that the case information is confidential until their investigation is finished.
“The Gainesville Police Department prides itself with our philosophy and mission of compassion, inclusion, and respect and will fully review the matter,” Tobias stated.
Hamill has been with the GPD since 2016, but it has yet to be seen if he will be continuing his work there after this scandal.