Whenever someone goes viral for something interesting, there’s usually a pretty good chance that their past will come back to bite them—it’s a recurring theme on the internet at this point. Our latest milkshake duck, Gainesville Police Department Officer Michael Hamill, whose photo unexpectedly went viral while helping Hurricane Irma victims back in September, just helped prove that rule.
Hamill turned in his badge on December 6, according to the Gainesville Sun. Internal Affairs officers were reportedly investigating Hamill regarding anti-Semitic statements he made on Facebook, and whether he had sex while on duty. “Both allegations would have been sustained with a possible recommendation of up to termination,” Gainesville PD spokesman Ben Tobias said in a statement, according to the Sun. The woman Hamill had sex with, who is not named in the Sun’s article, said that she met the former officer in his capacity as an Uber driver. He drove her home, in direct violation of the police department’s rule about outside employment.
As admirers fawned over the ‘hot cop’ in early September, the police department began to receive complaints about the officer’s misconduct just a few weeks later, prompting the investigation. The officer was suspended with pay at the same time that the internal investigation began on September 15. The investigation uncovered two anti-Semitic posts Hamill had made on his Facebook account prior to his career as a police officer. “Stupid people annoy me,” he said in a 2011 Facebook post, according to USA TODAY. “Put them in an oven and deal with them the Hitler way. Haha.” He also said that he enjoyed “Jewish jokes” in a 2013 post, adding “here is one for everybody, ‘What’s the difference between boy scouts and jews?’ Anybody know? Well it is because ‘Boy scouts come back from their camps.’” Tobias told the Sun that new police recruits will have to visit the Florida Holocaust Museum before they can take up their official role as police officer.
