NYPD investigating Cops Who Called West Indian Parade Participants 'Savages,' 'Animals'

Following the New York Times revelation that NYPD officers called West Indian Day Parade participants such names as “animals,” “savages,” and “filth” on a Facebook page, Police Commissioner Raymond Kelly announced that administrative charges could be brought against officers confirmed to have made the comments.

The "No More West Indian Day Parade Detail" Facebook group has since been taken down, but included 70 pages of primarily racist comments about the participants, including "drop a bomb and wipe them all out."

According to The Times, at least 60 percent of the groups' members are New York's finest.

NYPD Chief Raymond W. Kelly said in a statement this afternoon that an internal investigation found 20 offensive comments associated with names of police officers. The Internal Affairs Bureau is now interviewing the officers and subpoenaing computer records and could bring administrative charges against cops found guilty of writing the offensive remarks.

"It is disturbing when anyone denigrates a community with hateful speech” and “unacceptable when police officers do it,” Kelly said.

He added that the NYPD’s right to discipline behavior “disrespectful of communities that officers have taken an oath to protect” trumped First Amendment free-speech rights.

Councilwoman Letitia James called administrative charges "a slap on the wrist" and, along with other area pols, argued that an independent agency needed to be created to investigate what she called a "pervasive" pattern that includes not only the Facebook postings, but also such practices as the use of pepper spray on Occupy Wall Street protesters, the ticket fixing scandal, the ruling that a quota led to an arrest in the 81st Precinct, a Staten Island officer who allegedly suggested he arrested people based on their race and the city's "stop and frisk" policy.

"The NYPD cannot police itself," she said.

The annual  that marches down Eastern Parkway was particularly violent this year with at least five people shot and two dead, including  while sitting on a stoop with her 13-year-old daughter on Park Place near Franklin Avenue.