After an officer shared a picture of himself on the force’s Facebook page standing with Kyle Rittenhouse, a Texas police agency refused to cower in front of the awakened crowd.
In the photograph, Rittenhouse, who was with an unnamed Thrall Police Department officer, could be seen beaming widely in front of a police car.
The original message on the post was, “Make those stops, you never know who you could meet.” Kyle Rittenhouse was the guest today; welcome to Texas.
After killing three men, two of whom died, in what he said was self-defense during rioting in Kenosha, Wisconsin, in August 2020, after the death of Jacob Blake, Rittenhouse, 19, gained notoriety for his murder trial and eventual acquittal.
A backlash from online comments followed, but the Facebook manager for the Thrall Police Department kept her own and supported her officer’s posting.
I must have missed something since I thought this young guy had been detained, accused, and indicted before being declared innocent by a jury of his peers. Is this no longer how our nation operates?
The article said, “The hatred in these comments is abhorrent. If you have evidence that is opposite to that, I would really love to hear it.
Just a few hours later, however, the post had come under fire as irate social media users expressed their outrage at how the police had been gleefully posing with the contentious adolescent.
“It’s disgusting that you portray him as a hero. Kari Ashpaugh wrote, “Shame on your cop and this department.
Of the more than 1,800 individuals who left comments, Nai Roberts said, “What a farce of a police department.”
Are you kidding me? You’re allowing a convicted murderer to enter our state? Phoenix Woods said, “This is just repulsive.”
The ignorance of some of these agencies’ usage of social media, according to Ed Fox, “will never cease to astound.”
The police agency swiftly amended the tweet hours later but did not provide an apology.
The policeman shown in the post is unidentified.
The officer and Rittenhouse met in Thrall, which is roughly 40 miles northeast of Austin, for reasons that are likewise unknown.
As to how the picture came to be shot in the first place, Chief Whitney Whitworth has not offered any other details.
A jury found Rittenhouse not guilty late last year in the shootings that took place in Kenosha, Wisconsin, in August 2020.
In rioting that followed anti-police demonstrations in Kenosha, Rittenhouse, who was 17 at the time, used his AR-15 semi-automatic weapon to kill two white men and injure another.
The jury believed Rittenhouse’s claim that he was protecting himself from the three guys when he was accused of murder.
Rittenhouse said that he had come to Kenosha from the nearby state of Illinois in order to assist in preventing damage to private property during the riots that broke out after Kenosha police shot and crippled a black man named Jacob Blake.
Prior to the event, Rittenhouse supported the ‘Blue Lives Matter’ movement to support police on his Facebook page.
In reaction to harsh criticism of law enforcement officials for murdering Black individuals, including George Floyd’s slaying in Minnesota in May 2020, this was done.
Rittenhouse, who is now 19 years old, has said that he is in Texas to study at Blinn College in Brenham, which is east of Austin.