An investigator with the Clayton County District Attorney’s Office will resign Wednesday to avoid being fired for a comment he posted on a Facebook page that some found offensive. The comment involved the shooting of a child in southeast Atlanta over the weekend.
Investigator David Daniel wrote Sunday night that “violence with guns is unfortunately a part of the black culture and will never get better until the government stops supporting them and they are taught to work for what they get and not take from others.”
The posting on Channel 2 Action News' Facebook page was a response to a news story about a 1-year-old boy who was struck by a stray bullet in the parking lot of a southeast Atlanta apartment complex Saturday night. The child was shot in the arm and is recovering in the hospital. One person has been arrested in the shooting.
District Attorney Tracy Graham Lawson notified Daniel that she intended to fire him for using “racially derogatory terms ” and “wantonly offensive conduct” in a comment he made on the internet.
Daniel later took down his comments but offered to explain in a subsequent posting.
“Welfare was first created to assist families in need but has developed into a long-term income. Those that have no ambition to do any better for themselves and end up in neighborhoods where this sort of behavior is all too common. I am glad the child did not end up a fatality and a statistic.”
Daniel’s personnel file indicates he was a good employee, with a spotless record, for the office for 12 years.
Lawson would not speak about Daniel’s situation because it is a personnel matter. But in general, she said, public comments by DA’s office employees have bearing on their jobs even if they are spoken or written in their roles as private citizens.
“It will not be tolerated,” Lawson said Tuesday. “All employees in this office understand what they do on duty and off duty reflects upon this agency and they need to govern themselves accordingly. No form of hatred or prejudice or ill-will toward one group will be tolerated by me or those in my office. It will be met with instantaneous consequences.”
Keith Martin, Daniel’s attorney, said he had never seen anything to suggest Daniel is biased in regards to any group.
“Those words were ill-chosen and they were chosen out of anger,” Martin said. “It was anger, not toward a race, but a situation that allows children to be in peril.”
Still, Martin said, comments made in social media can threaten anyone’s job and people should be “most reflective before they write comment, dislike or post. We’re all judged by the company we keep both in person and our cyber fans.”
Channel 2 WSB-TV and The Atlanta Journal-Constitution are part of Cox Media Group, a unit of Atlanta-based Cox Enterprises.
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