Spalding County, Ga. – Two deputies at the Spalding County Sheriff’s office were recently unmasked as white supremacists on the website of a local Antifa chapter. The officers were extremely open about their views, making multiple racists posts on their public Facebook pages, and their gaming profiles online, where their place of work was listed. One of the officers even posed in front of Nazi flags in his main Facebook photo.
Deputies Howard Reece Costner and Jesse A. Jones were both fired after the details of their online postings were made public. Sheriff Darrell Dix said in a statement that, “Both have been fired. Their poor choices should in no way be construed to reflect the beliefs of the Spalding County Sheriff’s Office, Deputies, Detention Officers, or staff. We pride ourselves in our relationships with our community and in no way condone the former employee’s actions or opinions.”
Among the evidence against Jones was a Steam gaming profile where he used the claim “Hitler did nothing wrong,” as his tagline. Costner was also on Steam, only he used a photo of Dylan Roof, the racist murderer, for his profile picture. In a statement to Newsweek, Costner stood by his statements and blamed the Nazi memorabilia on an interest in history.
“I still stand by my statement that I am not a Neo-Nazi, and never have been. I also do not believe any of my comments Atlanta Antifa got ahold of were ‘Neo-Nazi comments’ or even ‘Hitler sympathetic comments’. One of my posts Atlanta Antifa put in their article was dark humor and or satire,” Costner said.
“The one with the NSDAP (Swastika flag) was not meant to be taken literally, and many people have already figured that out, but I wanted to make that clear. I have an infatuation with World War 2 history and specifically the German Wehrmacht, which is why you may see some Nazi memorabilia or even memorabilia from WW1 with the German Empire on my Social Media accounts,” he added.
As The Free Thought Project has reported, links between police officers and white supremacy in the U.S. are not a myth and have been ongoing for years.
In fact, according to one investigation conducted by law school students at Syracuse University, during the Civil Rights movement, the KKK ordered its members to infiltrate police departments, “because the laws don’t apply to them if they are the law.” This echoes an FBI statement in 2006 that white supremacist groups “have historically engaged in strategic efforts to infiltrate and recruit from law enforcement communities.”
We have reported on countless cases of these infiltrations over the years, from cops with Nazi tattoos to a cop filming his young daughter dressed as a cop, marching to a KKK anthem.
In one case, a police captain who was in charge of Portland’s drug and vice division, set up a shrine to Nazi soldiers in a public park. At first, Portland police Capt. Mark Kruger was suspended, but he was later able to sue to have the suspension wiped from his record, in addition to a $5000 reward.
