Suburban communities that are largely white always work to shed the image that racial profiling could be going on.  In Fishers, a Facebook post by the Police Department was attacked on Facebook as an instance of possible racial profiling, and Fishers is now working to react to all the Facebook comments and media attention.

The local police often place messages on social media as an alert to residents if illegal activity is suspected.  Recently, a post displayed a picture of a African-American man taken from a home security system.  That man appeared to say something suspicious that was recorded by the home security technology, but that was apparently not written on the initial police department Facebook post.  The police Facebook post referred to a man seen in the neighborhood in a  “silver ‘beat up’ Chrysler passenger car.”

Several comments were posted to Facebook accusing the Fishers Police of racial profiling.

Fishers Police Chief Ed Gebhart then posted his own message in response, writing “we were wrong by not releasing the full facts of the situation that prompted the original post.”

The chief went on to say, “It is never our intent to discriminate or judge any individual in any incident in Fishers.”

Then, Friday afternoon, The City of Fishers issued another statement by Chief Gebhart describing a meeting he and his assistant, Luke Gannon, had with the man in the initial Facebook picture.

Here is how Chief Gebhart described the meeting:

“The conversation was extremely productive, and the outcome of the meeting was positive. The individual in the video did want to clear the air and agreed that his actions could be construed as suspicious.  The family has asked that we remove the initial social media post and we intend to support their wishes.

“In the future, our Department will make every attempt to not only provide critical information needed to keep our residents safe, but also the context and motivations behind the information.”

When the Facebook comments began to mount accusing the Police Department of racial profiling, reporter John Tuohy posted a story about the situation on the Indianapolis Star Web site Friday afternoon