Facebook posts reveal NYPD Lieutenant Eric Dym’s support for Donald Trump, Rudy Giuliani, and racist police violence as well as his disdain for Black Lives Matter protesters and anyone who dares to criticize police.
Last week, a report by THE CITY revealed that the “most-complained-about NYPD cop”, Lieutenant Eric Dym – who was facing discipline for 52 substantiated allegations of misconduct – will not get fired. Instead, Dym will be allowed to retire, thereby avoiding punishment for numerous incidents of misconduct, including brutality, pointing a gun at someone, and lying.
As THE CITY laid out, Dym, who made nearly $216,000 in total pay last year including overtime, has a long history of atrocities. Over his 18-year career as a cop, Dym racked up 115 allegations of misconduct of which 52 were substantiated by NYC’s Civilian Complaint Review Board. This is no easy task given how difficult it is to get the notoriously weak and cop-coddling CCRB to actually substantiate an allegation against a cop. An internal CCRB memo found that, from 2014 to mid-2020, they only substantiated between 10% and 15% of the complaints filed against cops by civilians.
But we don’t need to rely solely on Dym’s actions to figure out whether he’s a fascist cop.
Dym was also infamously involved in a case, which I wrote an article on for The Appeal, where cops arrested copwatcher Jose LaSalle twice within 24 hours and tried to falsely pin a felony on him in August 2016. Luckily, LaSalle secretly recorded audio of cops celebrating his arrest and trying to frame him and ended up getting an $860,000 settlement from the city. Since then, LaSalle has kept an eye on Dym and has posted videos of Dym brutalizing people, harassing people during a traffic stop, stopping and frisking Black people in the Bronx, harassing Black women on the street, and gleefully riding an electric bike that he took from a young man.
Since Dym was one of the cops who participated in the second of those back-to-back arrests of LaSalle, I did some research on him while I was writing the article and discovered Dym’s then-public Facebook account. I found that Dym posted a photo of him and fellow cops from the same day that he made that arrest. And along with that, I found that Dym’s posts made his right-wing politics very clear. In his then-public Facebook posts, Dym shows his support for Donald Trump, Rudy Giuliani, stop and frisk, and of course, for police violence. His posts also show his disdain for Barack Obama, the Black Lives Matter movement, liberals, and for the “public criticising[sic] police work.”
On December 17, 2014, days after large Black Lives Matter protests in NYC, Dym shared a Facebook post from Fox News of Rudy Giuliani talking about policing on Bill O’Reilly’s show and chest-thumping about how he “froze out” Al Sharpton during his tenure as mayor. “Tell it like it is,” Dym wrote. “Go Rudy.” Dym’s Facebook profile also included a picture of him and some friends literally smiling and posing right next to Giuliani.
On December 21, 2014, the day after NYPD cops Rafael Ramos and Wenjian Liu were killed, Dym posted a right-wing meme allegedly showing pics of Obama speaking about Eric Garner, Michael Brown, and Trayvon Martin and then an empty podium with the caption “Obama speaking on 2 executed NYPD.”
“This is reality”, Dym wrote. The actual reality is that Obama was on Christmas holiday at the time and, on the very day Dym posted that meme, still managed to give a statement condemning the killing of the 2 cops.
On April 20, 2015, the day after Freddie Gray died from a brutal rough ride given to him by Baltimore cops, Dym got angry about a piece of copaganda going around the internet at the time showing body camera footage (released by cops) of New Richmond officer Jesse Kidder refusing to shoot 27-year-old Michael Wilcox even as Wilcox told Kidder “shoot me!” Kidder claimed a relative gave him the body camera to use after Mike Brown’s killing and the Ferguson uprising. The New Richmond Police Chief Randy Harvey tried to use the body camera footage to lobby for more police funding so that the rest of the New Richmond Police Department could get body cameras.
Dym was infuriated at the idea that cops should refrain from shooting people and blamed Black Lives Matter protests for making cops “afraid” to kill people.
“The media is praising a cop in Ohio for not shooting a man that he would’ve been justified to use such action,” Dym posted. “This cop was more afraid of becoming the next Ferguson then[sic] going home safe.”
A week later, during the Baltimore uprising sparked by the Baltimore cops’ killing of Freddie Gray, Dym continued complaining that cops were not being violent enough out of fear of sparking protests. “This is out of control,” he wrote on April 27, 2015. “Every cop is at a total disadvantage nationwide… A perpetrators[sic] has nothing to lose and every cop is afraid to take action forcefully even when it is necessary because they don’t want to be the next Ferguson.”
Days later, on May 4, Dym used the May 2 shooting of NYPD cop Brian Moore to advocate for stop and frisk and to deride members of the public who dare to criticize police over racist stop and frisks. Moore, a member of the infamously violent and racist Anti-Crime Unit, was a plainclothes cop who was shot and killed in Queens after he and his partner pulled up on Demetrius Blackwell in an unmarked car. For Dym, Moore being shot justified cops being allowed to violate the rights of unarmed Black people.
“I’m tired of the public criticising[sic] police work,” Dym posted. “Officer Moore was doing great police work and lost his life to a thug and will be honored but yet all of you anti police haters would spit at the cop if this thug was unarmed after being stopped by a cop […] You would say his rights were violated […] For all those that oppose stop and frisk you are headed for disaster.”
On July 9, 2015, Dym posted the kind of cringe right-wing boomer joke about political correctness that plagues far-right social media. “All the liberals out there want to ban something […] Everyone is so PC,” Dym wrote. “Please share what you would like to ban […] I will start with banning ninja turtle cartoons cause they should not have to live in a sewer.”
More than a year later, Dym was eagerly anticipating the election of Donald Trump. “And the vote is in,” he wrote on November 8, 2016. One of his friends made the pro-Trump sentiment clear by commenting on the post with “Make America great again.”
The next day, when many people were horrified at Trump’s win, Dym celebrated. “The people have spoken,” he wrote. “I knew Americans would come together.” When one of his friends commented on the post “which America u[sic] talking about. As a nation we are soooooo divided and with trumps[sic] vision and attitude towards women, class, race etc: we will never be 1 nation as we claim to be.”
Dym defended Trump and compared media coverage of Trump to media coverage of cops. “I don’t think he hates women, or hates anyone,” Dym replied. “I think the media twist everything just how they make us cops look bad for ratings.”
Months later on February 5, 2017, during the first Superbowl since Colin Kaepernick began kneeling during the national anthem to protest against racist police violence and white supremacy, Dym took to Facebook to shame anyone who didn’t stand for the anthem. “Watching the super bowl […] I hope all you people acknowledged the national anthem,” he wrote. “For those that didn’t […] Shame on you.” Dym, a former Marine, then made sure to throw in a “Semper fi Marines” at the end.
His fellow NYPD cops, Lieutenant Ramon Tejeda and Sergeant Harry Pakiakis, also replied to the post to express their agreement with Dym.
Perhaps Dym’s most interesting post though, given his recent retirement, was one he did on January 20, 2016. Dym was apparently counting down until 2024, when he could retire with his full pension. “12 years completed today in the NYPD,” he wrote. “8 more to go. Woohoo.” But thanks to everything he did to become the “most-complained-about NYPD cop,” Dym ended up not even having to do his 20 years before retirement.
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