AIBU about my friend's response to a post about the police on Facebook? (Title edited by MNHQ)

[Metalguru]

"The best copper is a dead copper" (added by MNHQ)

On my friends facebook. It's a comment by another person on a post about a member of her family going to prison. Emotions are running high, there have been lots of posts and comments about police corruption, those comments I have no problem with. But this comment has given me rage. Worse, my friend has "liked" the comment. She isn't someone I see regularly in RL, but I do message her from time to time and I like her as a person. She is going through a tough time and is angry about the verdict, so perhaps I should just leave it alone. But I find this deeply, deeply offensive to all the honest police officers and their families. So as not to drip feed, I do have police officers in my family, is that clouding my judgement? Please tell me if you would find this funny, ignore it, or find it offensive so I know if I'm overreacting. Also, should I ask her to remove the comment? I wouldn't do it on the post, I would message her. Thanks.

She'd be blocked from me completely if that was someone I knew. Utterly vile and while we have a sergeant in the family you don't need to have a relative in the police to think this is unjustifiable.

This gives me rage.

Someone once said it at a family party knowing full well that my dad and dbro were Police officers.

They just walked away. I ripped him a new one, verbally, and he scuttled out of the party. The idea that my family are fair game just fucks me off no end.

It's unpleasant and stupid, but I very much doubt it's a declaration of intent to kill. As to your friend, have a think about which of her qualities you value - is she kind to others? Loyal to you? Good fun? Someone you have a long shared history with? If she's just an acquaintance, bin from social media by all means, but don't junk a good longstanding friend for a passing moment of teenage petulance.

(Right now, half my social media connections are raging and and unfriending the other half over the election result, and I am very tired of people getting all pissy and squawky over what are really just passing remarks and differing opinions.)

I don't agree with what was said but it is obviously a very tumultuous time so I would just ignore. I wouldn't even mention it to her. If she isn't the sort who usually spouts nonsense just chalk it up to a heat of the moment thing. She liked a post on Facebook she didn't actually do it in fact I doubt she put that much thought into it herself

I'm a police officer and like KittyandTeal's DH, my first thought was 'meh.' I've heard a lot worse shit than that on manys an occasion. That said, if she was my fb friend I would think she was a pillock and defriend her.

Solid that's an interesting view after the others- we do have history and I thought she is a nice person, that's why I wanted to message and make her think twice about it, rather than unfriend her. But I chickened out as I didn't want things getting heated, it's a bit late now anyway, post has dropped off my newsfeed. I don't know the ignorant person who wrote the comment, but that's what really gave me the rage.

Also, while there are plenty of individual police officers who are decent human beings: fair-minded, sensible, genuinely working to make the world a better place and all that, there are plenty of individual police officers who are not decent people (the percentage of domestic violence perpetrators is higher among the police than among quite a lot of other occupations), and police corruption and brutality do occur. And there have also been quite a lot of occasions when the police have been instituationally bad - racist, excessively violent, misogynist, dishonest, etc.
So that FB comment is a bit immature and excessive, but there's not necessarily anything wrong with rejecting the idea that Our Policemen Are Wonderful, either.

I don't, and never did have an issue with the accusation of police corruption, for all I know they could be right and that part could be true. But it's a long leap from declaring the police to be corrupt, institutionally racist, homophobic etc, to ending up at a comment so offensive people reported it to MNHQ and it was removed from the title within an hour of me posting. Hate, inciting hate, and hateful abuse isn't tolerated, the right to put the police service under scrutiny about the issues above is a separate issue IMO.

It's wrong, so wrong to say something like that. But could she be 'liking' it because someone has shown solidarity to her situation and she doesn't know how to say 'thanks for the support but you should never wish someone dead'? You can only judge on this person's overall character. Personally I wouldn't say anything to her on a facebook - she's clearly having a tough time and Facebook is not the place for these kind of converstions. If you are close enough that you see her often I would potentially raise it then, otherwise if I wasn't so close I would delete her and chalk it down to her having a tough time and also not being particularly pleasant.

I also think you can accept that police officers are not perfect - some are good, some are bad, but it never makes wishing someone dead right! It's an awful thing to say regardless. And this comes from someone who has, in then past year, had a horrendous experience with the police, which has led to me making a complaint about something which I feel they have now whitewashed, and so, as you can imagine, I am very bitter about our police force. Regardless, wishing anyone dead is wrong. I would feel this way about criminals too.

I'm a police officer. I missed my daughter opening her birthday presents on Thursday because somebody else's baby daughter had died. I'd like to think people take this sort of thing into account when they decide to hate us/vote Tory.