A Charlotte Fire Department employee is fighting the city’s decision to terminate her employment after she posted a racially-charged comment on Facebook regarding the Ferguson police shooting.
The city’s NPR affiliate said in a report Thursday that Crystal Eschert’s September firing has sparked a debate over the First Amendment rights of public employees.
Eschert was working as a Charlotte fire investigator when Ferguson Police Officer Darren Wilson shot and killed 18-year-old Michael Brown.
After the shooting, she went on Facebook to ask why another police shooting near Ferguson involving a white victim wasn’t drawing the same amount of attention as the Brown shooting.
“Where is Obama?” she wrote. “Where is Holder? Where is Al Sharpton? Where are Trayvon Martin’s parents? Where are all the white guy supports” So WHY is everyone MAKING it a racial issue?!? So tired of hearing it’s a racial thing. If you are a thug and worthless to society, it’s not race — You’re just a waste no matter what religion, race or sex you are!”
According to the Charlotte Observer, Crystal Eschert also shared a post from the website “Law Enforcement Today”:
“Want to know where racial tension and cultural divide comes from? 794 law enforcement officers have fallen in the Line of Duty since B.H. Obama took office, with no special recognition from the White House. A man robs a convenience store and assaults a cop; the White House sends three representatives to his memorial service.”
Charlotte City Manger Ron Carlee alleges that Eschert’s spot-on comments “were discriminatory and inflammatory.”
Duke University professor of law Guy Charles argues that though her comments were allegedly “racially insensitive,” they were issued on a private FB page: “Between the hand that she’s holding and the hand that the city’s holding, I think I’d prefer to have her hand.”
Seems like a simple First Amendment case, right? Wrong. Unfortunately, according to the Daily News, Eschert has decided to forego the First Amendment route in favor of a completely wacky and rather insane angle involving safety concerns:
. . . Eschert thinks she was fired in retaliation for raising safety concerns on a building being used by the department.
A week prior to her firing, Eschert raised safety concerns on a building that the fire department was using, regardless of it being under renovation and unsafe for work operations.
Source: Fox News
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