Whatever your thoughts on policing in general in America, I would hope it would be largely uncontroversial to state that a huge percentage of Americans believe that police are generally over-militarized and at least slightly a little too trigger happy, especially when it comes to engaging minority communities. If you somehow think that there isn’t at least a perception problem among the public here, then you probably don’t need to keep reading the rest of this post, because it’s not going to make sense to you.
But if you do understand that there is some level of a problem here, your skin will almost certainly crawl when you see the recruiting poster the Peoria, IL police put out on social media to try to get young recruits.
A Peoria, Illinois police department tried to recruit new officers with a Call of Duty-inspired campaign on social media, and it was as tone-deaf as you’d imagine. The post, originally shared on the Peoria Police Department’s social media page, showed three white men posing with guns while wearing tactical gear. “Stop playing games and answer the Call of Duty,” the post reads, with the “Call of Duty” portion of the poster written in the same text as Activision’s wildly popular (and more than occasionally problematic) first-person shooter franchise.
Imagine just how tone-deaf you have to be in the current climate of policing in America to put this poster out. First, recruiting people with images of police in tactical gear pointing guns is precisely the wrong message you want to put out to a community in Peoria that is concerned about policing. Doubly so when the image is of three white cops in a community with a sizable black population.
And now add to all of that the simple fact that Call of Duty is a game in which you primarly spend a great deal of time shooting individuals. Like, with bullets and stuff. You know, to kill them. And, sure, it’s a video game and in that context I don’t have an issue with the game itself. But in a society where many believe that police far too often see themselves as gun-toting enforcers through violence, recruiting against a video game like CoD is absurd.
Police Chief Eric Echevarria eventually took the post down and apologized in a way that I will say does ring through as genuine.
It was never my intention to offend any of our community members with the recruitment flyer that was posted on our Facebook page yesterday. It was simply a recruitment image I thought would appeal and connect to a younger generation. I take ownership of this, and I sincerely apologize. Our goal is to recruit the best and most qualified officers for this police department in the most caring and respectful way.
It’s probably a good move, because we haven’t even gotten into the issue of intellectual property. The poster does name the game and use the same or similar font for the game’s branding when doing so. While I’m not sure there’s an actual trademark infringement case to be made here, I am also quite sure that Activision probably wouldn’t appreciate the use of its product name and branding in this way.
And so the poster is down, but the damage is done. In a community where fear of police violence is very real, that community got a reminder of how some police officers see their jobs.
Peoria Police Put Out Recruiting Poster Telling Recruits To Come Play ‘Call Of Duty’ In Real Life
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