An NYPD officer is facing disciplinary action after tweeting “Black Lives Matter” from her personal account, in response to a post from the Department’s 76th Precinct’s Twitter page.
Gwendolyn Bishop, a black woman, was reprimanded and slapped with departmental charges after officials accused her of inappropriately writing on the Brooklyn Precinct’s Twitter page. According to reports, she responded to a tweet about a gun arrest that read, “#76thPct Special Ops Team makes arrest and recovers a loaded 9MM hand gun #onelessgun.” To which Bishop responded saying, “Sad day for the 76th Pct. #BlackLivesMatter,” from her personal account, @ducklipzanddimplzz.
Since the Feb. 17th tweet and response, Bishop has been in hot water with the higherups of the department. On Tuesday, the officer stood for a departmental trial to explain her actions, as officials determine the fate of her future with the department. When asked about the tweet, the officer said she made a typo, blaming it on autocorrect. She said she meant to write #Bluelivesmatter, a hashtag she has used in two other tweets.
“I vaguely remember the tweets. If I had to guess, there were a lot of changes in my precinct about shifts being switched, but it had nothing to do about this gun arrest,” she said.
Bishop’s counsel, John Tynan, defended his client’s actions revealing that she has not violated any rules. Being that she replied to the tweet from her own personal account, she did not access the official account for the Precinct, and her personal account did not reveal she was an officer of the law, Daily News reports.
“She can reply to a tweet just as the 500 million others who use Twitter can,” he said.
However, the Precinct’s integrity control officer refuted Tynan’s defense, saying that the picture of Bishop’s account matched the picture on her Facebook page. Lt. Steven Rios also revealed the Twitter account was linked to a Veronica Bishop, which is the woman’s middle name, the publication reports.
Bishop faces a year of probation and the loss of up to 30 vacation days if convicted of all the accusations brought against her, including violating departmental rules and “mouthing off” to higherups.
