A Buffalo Police officer known as a “jokester” long before he joined the city’s police force in 2012 has been suspended for a month after continuing to post videos online.
Officer Richard Hy first drew wide attention in February 2016 after he was suspended from the force for making outrageous and sometimes crude social media videos — known as “Angry Cops” — and posting them online.
The Buffalo News reported that at the time of that suspension, for violating the department’s social media policy, Hy had put up more than 100 of his own videos on the former video-sharing site, Vine.
Many of the videos featured topics that police leaders deemed as objectionable, such as Hy pretending to snort cocaine, then screeching and laughing; recording a fake police shooting in which Hy tells the victim to be quiet since he was only grazed, as well as one featuring Hy, who is white, dancing around with a black officer to promote racial harmony.
Hy stopped wearing his department uniform in his videos after he was ordered to by Internal Affairs in 2015 and started wearing a costume uniform and a prop badge.
We reviewed the YouTube Page of “Angry Cops” and saw several parody videos. Hy is never in uniform, never mentions the Buffalo Police Department and we saw nothing remotely close to offensive.
Then again, we live in an era where that really doesn’t matter.
The leadership at the Buffalo Police Department have not specifically said why they suspended Hy for a month and they should because based on what we are seeing, he has done nothing wrong but publish parody videos online and off duty without ever mentioning where he works.
