A Chicago police lieutenant named in two misconduct suits joined hateful groups and posted hateful content on Facebook according to a new investigation from Reveal from the Center for Investigative Reporting looking into the connection between hate groups on Facebook and police officers.
Lt. Richard Moravec openly posted anti-transgender and anti-Islam content on his account, according to the reports, and also joined a closed Facebook group called “Any islamist insults infidels, I will put him under my feet,” which dissappeared before the news outlet was able to join the group.
Moravec, 53, was named in two misconduct cases, according to the Reporter’s Settling for Misconduct database.
In total, those cases paid out $118,000. In the case that led to the larger settlement, supervisors were accused of not reporting inconsistencies in another officer’s story as they attempted to frame a witness of a shooting with the shooting. The case played out over five years before the plaintiff was found not guilty after 30 minutes of deliberation.
In the other case, the city settled claims of excessive force for $18,000 against 10 officers who were accused of violently handcuffing and arresting a man while serving a search warrant.
In addition to the misconduct cases, Moravec has 70 complaints filed against him, which is more than 99% of Chicago Police officers, according to the Citizens Police Data Project.
Those accusations include: use of force, false arrest, verbal abuse, personnel violations and criminal misconduct. Only one of those complaints was sustained and it was for conduct unbecoming of a police officer while off-duty back in 1994. It resulted in a five-day suspension more than a year later.
In response to questions about Moravec’s reported social media use, a spokesman for the Chicago Police Department passed along its general policy on social media use and said the incident is being investigated by the Civilian Office of Police Accountability.
The investigation from Reveal found nearly 400 formerly employed of currently employed police officers, sheriffs, prison guards interacting in extremist groups on Facebook. In a similar investigation published earlier this month, Injustice Watch exposed more than 5,000 posts and other activity that was collected by the Plain View Project in eight police departments across the country.
This post has been updated since publishing.