Nashville Cop Decommissioned Over Facebook Post With Apparent Minnesota Shooting Reference

A Nashville, Tennessee, police officer has been decommissioned after posting a message to Facebook seemingly referring to the fatal police shooting of Philando Castile in Minnesota earlier this week. Castile, 32, died after being shot by police four times during a traffic stop outside Minneapolis.

Around 3 p.m. Thursday, just hours after Castile's shooting, police in Nashville became aware of one officer's personal Facebook post.

“Yeah. I would have done 5," Anthony Venable wrote in a comment, apparently referring to the number of gunshots wounds from which Castile suffered.

Venable, who is an eight-year veteran of the force, defended the post as sarcasm. Police Chief Steve Anderson, however, wasn't buying it.

“The police department is treating this matter very seriously and took immediate action, regardless of what he claims the context to have been,” Anderson said, according to WSMV-TV.

On Thursday, Anderson released a statement expressing his concern for what happened both to Castile in Minnesota and to 37-year-old Alton Sterling in Baton Rouge, Louisiana, on Tuesday.

“I am extremely concerned and disturbed by the videos and the accounts we have heard thus far coming from Baton Rouge and Falcon Heights," Anderson said, according to the Tennesseean.

"I have confidence in the men and women working to protect the people of this city, their moral ethic, the skills they possess and their ability to make appropriate decisions in difficult situations," the Nashville police chief added.

(H/T: WSMV-TV)

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