NYPD Officer Gwendolyn Bishop In Trouble For Responding to NYPD Twitter With Black Lives Matter

NYPD Officer Gwendolyn Bishop is in hot-water over a tweet with a Black Lives Matter hashtag.

Officer Gwendolyn Bishop Facing Discipline Over Black Lives Matter Tweet

Brooklyn, NYC –  NYPD Officer Gwendolyn Bishop is in trouble with her agency after her reply to an agency’s social media post included a Black Lives Matter hashtag.

According to the New York Daily News, she replied to the to a February 17, 2016 post on NYPD’s 76th Precinct Twitter page.  The post was about a gun arrest in her precinct by a NYPD Special Ops team.  It said:

“#76Pct Special Ops Team makes arrest and recovers a loaded 9MM hand gun #onelessgun.”

Officer Bishop’s reply was “Sad day for the 76thPct.#BlackLivesMatter.”

She posted the reply under her personal Twitter account, @ducklipzanddimplzz.  The name on that account is Veronica Bishop, which is her middle and last name. The initial tweet remains but the replies and the rest of the account have been removed.

She is a four and one-half year veteran of the agency.  She told her supervisors that she didn’t remember replying to the post.  She also said that she rarely uses Twitter.

Officer Bishop’s departmental hearing was held on Tuesday.  When asked at her hearing, her reply was that she meant to type #Bluelivesmatter, and blamed her phone’s autocorrect for the mistake.

She said that she was not responding directly to the post.  Her response to Police Commissioner David Weisel was “If I had to guess, there were a lot of changes in my precinct about shifts being switched, but it had nothing to do about this gun arrest.”

Officer Bishop, who is black, posted the comment three times, and used #Bluelivesmatter in two out of three, according to her attorney.

NYPD Lieutenant Steven Rios, the 76th Precinct’s Integrity Control Officer, said that a picture from Officer Bishop’s Twitter account was the same as her Facebook page, where she identified herself as a cop who patrols Red Hook. That is part of the patrol area of the 76th Precinct.

Other violations that were heard at the hearing include an incident where Officer Bishop “mouthed off to Superior Officers” and other incidents where she violated departmental rules such as taking a break without informing a superior, going over a supervisor’s head to get time off, and conducting vertical patrols on her own.

If Officer Bishop is found guilty of all of the violations, she could face a year’s probation on the job and lose 30 vacation days.

It is not known how long it will be before the results of the hearing are back.

Many are left wondering about Officer Bishop’s seemingly conflicting stories. She said the first time that she didn’t remember replying to the post and that she rarely uses Twitter. Then she said that she meant to type #Bluelivesmatter and blamed her phone’s autocorrect.  So which is it?

Do you think that this was intentional trolling on Twitter, or an honest mistake? We’d like to hear what you think. Please let us know in the comments.