A Michigan police officer who kept Ku Klux Klan (KKK) and Confederate memorabilia in his home has been fired, NBC News reports.
Charles Anderson had been employed by the Muskegon Police Department, but is now jobless, thanks to a failure to think things through regarding his home décor when he put his home on the market. Back in August, as NBC News reported at the time, Anderson’s home was for sale when a pair of prospective buyers toured the home and noticed a few things: there was a framed Ku Klux Klan application and multiple Confederate flags displayed throughout the house.
The prospective home buyer, later identified as Robert Mathis, who is black, was taken aback by the memorabilia. He didn’t know whose home he was touring, but concluded that it belonged to a police officer based on the presence of police paraphernalia in the house. When he got home, he posted the story about his experience to social media. He didn’t identify whose home he was touring, but apparently enough townsfolk around the city of approximately 40,000 people were familiar with Anderson, and soon it was brought to the Muskegon Police Department’s attention.
Unfortunately for Anderson, the police department has a specific policy against “being in possession of certain items associated with a white supremacy group.” In mid-August, Anderson was placed on administrative leave by his department.
Now, Anderson is out of a job. At a disciplinary hearing on Thursday, the decision was made to fire him.
Neither Anderson, nor his union, the Police Officers Labor Council, could immediately be reached for comment.
Reyna Mathis, who along with her husband was touring Anderson’s home that day, said at the time that her realtor cried.
“Our realtor, who is white, even cried. She just kept apologizing,” Reyna said.
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Unfortunately, the Mathises say they’ve been getting death threats ever since the incident. One such threat came just a couple of days after their story initially began to be picked up by the national news. One threat even resulted in the Muskegon Police Department paying a visit to the Mathises’ home to warn them.
Police departments across the country have white supremacists on their forces, according to a 2016 PBS report, and indeed, in at least one city, a police officer has spoken up about it. In St. Louis, as previously reported by The Inquisitr , a police sergeant said publicly that there are white supremacists on the city’s police force.
