We are writing this to inform everyone that we were made aware of the situation with the comments on Facebook from Steven Aucoin. Chief Hardy had the incident looked into and the officer was terminated. Chief Hardy and the Kaplan Police Department would like to apologize for this matter.
Chief of Police Joshua Hardy said the department was made aware of a post that Aucoin had made on Facebook, and the post was racist in nature.
The chief confirmed to KATC that the post insinuated it was "unfortunate" the coronavirus did not kill off all black people. Hardy says he does not tolerate that behavior.
The officer had worked previously for the department for eight months and had been back on the force for about three months.
This story was originally published by staff at KATC.
