WATCH: The Toronto Police Services Board Chair says he was a little naive in sharing a Facebook post and says he and Mayor Tory are not on bad terms.
TORONTO –Alok Mukherjee is demanding Toronto Police Association President Mike McCormack retract statements he made alleging Mukherjee, head of the civilian police watchdog, is biased against police based on a post on his Facebook page.
But Mukherjee admits he probably should have better contextualized the post, which compared the number of Americans killed by ISIS and Ebola to the number of Americans killed by police. “I can’t breathe”! Mukherjee wrote as the caption, an apparent reference to the last words of Eric Garner, an unarmed asthmatic black man killed by a New York police officer who, a grand jury announced last week, won’t face charges.
“I should have provided the context,” Mukherjee told Global News. “My – naïve, probably – thinking was that the context was very much there in who the source of this poster was and the context was very much in the quotation that I put on top of it.
“I took it for granted that my readers know this context, those that subscribe to my Facebook page are familiar with this context.”
Mukherjee told the Toronto Sun his reputation is being “destroyed” as a result of a “smear campaign” directed at him after he shared a photo supporting protests against the decision not to indict the New York City police officer who choked Eric Garner to death.
READ MORE: Police union demands board chair resign after alleged ‘I can’t breathe’ Facebook post
“Mukherjee has crossed the line. His lack of objectivity indicates he is no longer fit to sit on a police oversight body,” reads a Friday statement from the union, calling for his resignation.
“His sharing of this poster is clearly unprofessional, clearly unethical and clearly seeks to undermine the very people he is paid to oversee.”
Mukherjee told the Sun that the suggestion he’s anti-police is wrong.
Mayor John Tory said last week the police board chair’s Facebook post was an error in judgement and Tory hoped for a full public explanation on the matter.
VIDEO: The Global News panel discusses whether the police union should have called on Alok Mukherjee to resign over his Facebook activity.
Comments