The Lafayette, Indiana police department announced Saturday that they fired a "recruit officer" after he participated in the Neo-Nazi web forum Iron March.
According to a release, officer Joseph Zacharek was outed on Twitter after he was discovered participating in the fascist forum. The police department did an investigation into the officer and discovered enough that prompted the department to fire him.
"The Lafayette Police Department conducts very thorough and complete background investigations on all potential employees, which includes a complete review of personal social media accounts," the release said. "While this information may not have been accessible through our investigative processes, we are appreciative that it was brought to our attention. We take great pride in our investigations and are extremely disappointed that we were not able to uncover this information in that process. We endeavor to learn from this investigation to ensure it never happens again."
The department also tried to reassure the community that the officer had nothing to do with the everyday policing of the department.
"Officer Zacharek was hired in June of 2020 and to this point has been working solely in a training environment and has no exposure to the public," the release said. "As a result of this investigation Officer Zacharek’s employment with the Lafayette Police Department has been terminated."