A South Carolina sheriff’s office swiftly fired one of its deputies after he made a racially inflammatory social media remark about Black people while on duty.
According to The Post and Courier, a Spartanburg County deputy was sitting in his patrol car when he posted a photo of himself wearing a ski mask with the message, “To find a YN, you must be a YN.”
“YN” is an abbreviation of “young n****.”
Sheriff Bill Rhyne, the recently appointed commander of the Spartanburg County Sheriff’s Office, revealed that the deputy, who is white, wrote the post on November 20. The following morning, he was sacked, effectively ending his five-year career at the agency.
“That kind of stuff will absolutely not be tolerated under any circumstances at this agency under my leadership,” Rhyne stated during a press conference, according to WYFF. “What we do in uniform and the things and the choices that we make in uniform not only reflects on themselves, but it reflects on every man and woman that wears this uniform, not only here at the sheriff’s office, but across the entire state in the United States.”
According to Rhyne, the deputy violated procedures requiring staff members not to degrade themselves or the sheriff’s office or to post “ethnically derogatory material” on social media.
“This is not representative of what this agency wants to be, and this is not representative of what we want the people of Spartanburg County to think,” according to the sheriff.
Rhyne did not specify which platform the message was made on, and he has yet to reveal the deputy’s identify to the public, giving him time to inform family members before the word spreads.
“The reason for that is I want to be respectful to them,” Rhyne told me. “This is incredibly fresh. This has just happened. I want to make sure I’m respectful enough to them to allow them enough time to notify their families and other people.
According to Rhyne, the Criminal Justice Academy is likely to strip the deputy of his law enforcement accreditation.
