Captain Jay Baker of the Cherokee County Sheriff’s Office in Georgia, who on Wednesday seemingly downplayed the three spa shootings in which most of the victims were women of Asian descent, showed off racist shirts online that blamed Chinese people for the COVID-19 pandemic.
The Daily Beast and BuzzFeed News published several posts on Baker’s Facebook page from 2020 that promoted t-shirts emblazoned with “COVID-19 IMPORTED VIRUS FROM CHY-NA.”
“Place your order while they last,” Baker wrote with a smiley face in one post on March 30.
The police captain boosted the shirts again on April 2.
“Love my shirt,” he wrote. “Get yours while they last.”
Baker’s posts emerged amid backlash over his borderline sympathetic remarks on Wednesday about Robert Aaron Long, who has been charged with murder for allegedly fatally shooting eight people at three spas in the Atlanta area on Tuesday night. Six of the victims were women of Asian descent.
During a press briefing with other law enforcement officers and Atlanta Mayor Keisha Lance Bottoms on Wednesday afternoon, Baker seemed to characterize Long as some sort of victim whose alleged crimes were the result of having a hard day.
“He was pretty much fed up, he’d been kind of at the end of his rope, and yesterday was a really bad day for him,” the police captain said. “And this is what he did.”
Long, who is set to appear in court via Zoom on Thursday, has been charged with eight counts of murder and one count of aggravated assault after confessing to the massacre.
Authorities have said it is too early in the investigation to determine whether the shootings were motivated by racism. Long told investigators that they weren’t, according to law enforcement.
However, the attacks occurred during an ongoing surge of racist harassment and violence against Asian-Americans amid COVID-19, which ex-President Donald Trump frequently referred (and continues to refer after leaving office) to as “the China virus.”
What chance do you thank a suspected Asian perp has with this guy? His character is disqualifying and his judgment absolutely so. This guy is so settled in his position…so comfortable with the privilege it gives him that he had no pause when he posted that crap. That’s how far down the rabbit hole this asshole is.
Nothing will happen to him.
I wonder if the words “last” and “order” are prominent in his thoughts today.
I understand why you say that but I think we both hope for a better outcome.
Well, since the murderer told them so, I guess that’s that.
Oh, yeah, it was a really bad day for him you racist. What about the women murdered?
I really am losing any kind of faith in this country.