An officer of the Minneapolis Police Department has stirred up controversy with Facebook postings that some have deemed racist and insensitive. Minneapolis-St. Paul's KMSP reported that Joseph Ming Klimmek -- a 5-year veteran of the force -- has posted numerous items to the social medium featuring racist jokes or making light of recent homicides.
Earlier this week, Klimmek posted a link to a story about a recent shooting death in south Minneapolis. The police officer commented, "3 murders in 3 days and it's not even warm yet. This could be a busy year finally."
In other posts, the officer showed a photo of an SUV's back window with a female stick figure flanked on one side by three male stick figures behind bars and on the other side by a large brood of stick figure children. "Meanwhile on the north side," said the photo's caption. North Minneapolis has historically been majority African-American since the "white flight" of urban whites to the outlying suburbs that began in the 1960s.
Some area residents believe that Klimmek -- who posts under the name Joseph Klimax -- shouldn't be in public service when he espouses such openly racist views.
"Racism and glorifying murders is not the thing that I want my kids to look up to," said Alicia Lucio to Channel 9.
Lucio disputed Klimmek's contention that the last few years were "slow" on homicides.
"The last few years have not been 'slow,'" she said. "I have, unfortunately, attended many funerals myself. To see [police] feel as though they need more to do when there's plenty of things they could be doing is really disconcerting."
Another parent who asked to remain anonymous told Channel 9, "It's not the kind of field where you would hope for a busy time."
Lucio said that Klimmek's post have a nasty, pointedly racist undertone.
"It's a white supremacist kind of mentality," she said.
The Minneapolis Police released a statement on Tuesday night that said, "The Minneapolis Police Department is opening an internal inquiry in regards to the single Facebook post you have inquired about to see if there is any legitimacy to the alleged post. The alleged post provided to MPD is certainly not in line with our core values."
Watch video about this story, embedded below:
