Village board silent as Lexipol promotes bigot
To the editor:
As someone who works for a digital publishing company, I’ve seen websites do a lot of strange things. It’s not often I see something I’ve never seen before.
That’s why I was shocked to see Lexipol’s news website, police1.com, platforming a bigot like Ian Miles Cheong.
Lexipol’s website does what many others do — republish news stories from the Associated Press using “rel=canonical” tags so search engines know the same content exists on multiple websites.
However, Lexipol did something I’ve never seen before. They made the editorial decision to replace an Associated Press video with a tweet from Cheong.
Take a quick look through Cheong’s Twitter feed. You’ll see praise for Kyle Rittenhouse, demonization of Jacob Blake and exactly what you’d expect from a far-right bigot.
Lexipol didn’t just do this once. They embedded Cheong’s tweet in two articles related to protests in Kenosha, Wisconsin, following racist police violence.
Perhaps someone more forgiving than myself would chalk this up as a mistake. Then again, Lexipol has been hired to do “housekeeping” for our police department.
These are the details that matter to those of us who care about addressing police brutality and systemic racism.
If you’re cynical like me, you see this as a deliberate attempt by Lexipol to craft a pro-law-enforcement narrative in the wake of racist police violence.
Regardless, Lexipol’s editorial decisions are promoting white supremacist ideology. Our tax dollars are helping them do it.
Bravo, village board.
David Lynch
Saranac Lake
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