Lee deputy under investigation for Facebook posts
A Lee County sheriff's deputy is under investigation for postings made to his Facebook page.
Sheriff Mike Scott addressed his Facebook followers Tuesday saying the sheriff's office had opened an investigation into the incident.
"Earlier this afternoon I was made aware of possible inappropriate social media messages attributed to a member of this agency," Scott wrote.
Scott did not identify the deputy by name, but said he would act swiftly.
Judy Piesco, a south Fort Myers resident, said she made a report to internal affairs after she saw some of the content being shared by Deputy Chuck Quackenbush, an 11-year-veteran of the force.
"If I was the head of the police department and someone came out with stuff like that, I would fire them," Piesco said.
Piesco, 73, said she and a number of other people made reports to internal affairs.
"It's blatantly racist and it's disturbing," Piesco said. "I just think it's appalling. Not only is one of our deputies apparently really racist, but posting it on Facebook."
Quackenbush was hired in 2005 after being embroiled in turmoil as a California politician, according to The News-Press archives. He was elected as insurance commissioner following an earthquake in 1994 and established two foundations meant to aid earthquake victims. The foundations came under investigation by the Los Angeles Times which led to charges for a member of his staff. They were painted as a slush fund for Quackenbush's political ambitions, according to The News-Press reports.
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Quackenbush, however, was cleared of any wrongdoing. He turned to a career in law enforcement.
Chris Quackenbush, his wife who is running for the Lee County School Board District 7 seat, said the complaints filed against her husband are politically motivated and meant to attack her candidacy.
"He has never done anything wrong with regard to racism or anything else," Chris Quackenbush said. "He works hard 12 hours a day protecting a community he loves and comes home and smiles."
Chris Quackenbush said her husband never created any of the content, but shared posts created and shared by conservatives.
"This is the lowest political blow I can possibly imagine," Chris Quackenbush said.
Quackenbush said it was dangerous to identify her husband because of the dangerous work law enforcement officers face every day.
"To put his name up," she said, "It sets him up for injury."
Quackenbush has since deleted the images on his Facebook page, but screenshots of the images remain, including one shared on Aug. 24. The image depicts a black woman protesting next to the image of a skinny black men, whose bones are hugged by his skin with a speech balloon that says, "How do your poor and oppressed get to be so fat?"
A second image shared by Quackenbush on Aug. 15 shows a person walking away with a bundle of items in their hands with the caption: "Looting: when free food, housing, phones, healthcare & education aren't enough."
"As has been my practice with other egregious examples, like the racist caricature drawn by former employee Shelly Bechtol, I have a zero tolerance policy for this nonsense," Scott wrote on his Facebook page.
Bechtol was fired in July of last year after allegedly drawing a racist image of Tavaris Gary, the county's first African-American varsity baseball coach, on a wall in the family's kitchen that was going to be demolished.
Tavaris replaced Bechtol's husband, David Bechtol, at the school. She has since been rehired by the agency.