A Black officer with the Greensboro Police Department in North Carolina says he was fired last week after his supervisors became enraged over a TikTok video he made discussing police brutality weeks after George Floyd was killed during an arrest.
On Instagram, Ja'Quay Williams wrote that his bosses watched a video he made about Floyd and immediately put him under investigation for his social media use.
The GPD ultimately decided to fire Williams. He said he was "shocked, confused, angry" and felt like the termination was "extreme."
"A few months ago I started to post videos of humor on @TikTok in my police uniform. People loved the laughs, and joy I would bring to them on their days of watching me. Around that time, the horrific George Floyd video was out and as a black man I felt the need to use my new found platform to speak on what’s right and what’s wrong as I always did," he wrote.
"The video went viral. That same day I was spoke to about the video and how I shouldn’t post in uniform so I STOPPED. Those who know me personally know that I’ve been doing music forever (since elementary school) and my style of music is more of a conscious style. I talk on everything from depression, to suicide. So shortly after I made a video called hello America and boy they did not like that at all," he said.
"But to be honest as I stayed [off] the streets for 2 months I started to realize more and more that God will do what God feels is beneficial and you don’t argue with god, you remain content and push forward. Of course I feel like firing me was an extreme and I will look further into this NOW," Williams added.
After his video racked up thousands of views, Williams appeared on Tamron Hall's show to discuss Floyd's killing.
During the interview, Williams said his department's captain of internal affairs told him it was a violation of department policy to post videos with a police uniform on and that his superiors demanded he take the videos down.
Williams complied and deleted the videos, but he said he started to receive messages from multiple outlets telling him they planned to write articles about them.
The June video of Williams shows the former officer speaking passionately about the arrest of Floyd and how the officers involved failed him.
He took issue with former Minneapolis officer Derek Chauvin not rendering aid after Floyd said he could not breathe. Williams also criticized the other officers for not stepping up and stopping Chauvin when it was clear Floyd was suffocating.
He told Hall that his superiors called to yell at him about the video just four hours after he posted it.
In the interview, Williams said he was thankful because the videos started discussions among police officers about how they perform their job.
"We work in a predominantly Black neighborhood. It's imperative for the white officers to empathize with the Black people of the neighborhood because that trauma that that Black person is dealing with when you go to a call with them is not the trauma from that day. This is trauma from before," he said, according to MSN.
He added that he was originally inspired to become an officer after the Trayvon Martin verdict.
Williams has created a GoFundMe campaign to raise money for a potential lawsuit against the police department for firing him. More than $30,000 has been raised so far.
