Fired clerk’s Facebook post advised shooting protesters
From Staff Reports
The Facebook post that got a city of Darlington employee fired June 1 said that protesters who have damaged property and looted businesses should be shot, imprisoned or taken off food stamps, according to S.C. news media reports.
The Charleston Post and Courier newspaper published a copy of the post that it said was written by then-Darlington Clerk of Court Jonna Carter.
The newspaper quoted the post as saying: “Anyone protesting are obviously unhappy with their own life. … Shoot their (expletive), lock them up, stop their food stamps … Take their children … They are showing their true colors … I’m upset about what happened but I would not destroy someone’s property … They are a piece of (expletive)!!!!”
Carter was apparently commenting on protesters in Nashville who were marching to express outrage over the death of a Minnesota man who died while being taken into custody by Minneapolis police. One officer put his knee on the man’s throat and kept it there for several minutes as the man lay handcuffed on the ground.
Darlington city officials ordered Carter to remove the post and fired her immediately after city offices reopened after the weekend of May 30-31, when dozens of U.S. cities faced protests that turned violent.
“The post she put out was completely overboard and can’t be tolerated,” Darlington Mayor Curtis Boyd told news media.
“People have the right to freedom of speech, but when you go out and post stuff the way it was posted, to us, it’s like running through and saying ‘Fire!’ in the middle of a restaurant,” Boyd said in a video posted on the city’s Facebook page.
In Columbia, according to media reports, a bus driver for Richland School District 1 was fired after he posted a social-media message at about the same time urging people to “treat (protesters) like rabid dogs and SHOOT them.”
