“I’ve never had this happen before,” said Liz McArthur via Facetime Sunday.
The Salem Police Department said its officer has done nothing wrong. The sheriff’s department is still looking into the matter.
The group of men targeting her, she says, were strangers. She knew none of them.
It wasn’t until later, that she discovered two of them were a Salem police officer a Marion County deputy.
“I’ve never had this happen before,” McArthur told KGW via Facetime Sunday.
She said the men targeting her were strangers, and that their comments went on for hours before she discovered two of them were law enforcement officers.
McArthur said it all started on November 20, when she posted a link to an editorial written by a Huffington Post contributor.
The piece, titled “Women Of The World: It’s Time To March On Washington,” encouraged women to attend the planned “Women’s March on Washington” on January 21, the day after Donald Trump’s scheduled inauguration.
McArthur’s caption read “I am going.”
“I didn’t want to spark any sort of debate. I just wanted to feel empowered and say that this was happening,” she said.
Within hours the trolls arrived, she said.
One of the first comments came from James Coleman.
Screenshots taken by McArthur show he posted a meme featuring Elsa from the movie “Frozen” and reading, “Election is over. Let it go.”
He then posted a link to a guide for Paxil, an anti-depressant. McArthur said he wrote “Irrational … turmoil … tummy breath … it will calm you…”
McArthur said Coleman kept posting and tagged friends.
“It was kind of an out-of-body, like, a bad dream,” she said. “It was sort of spinning out of control.”
One of the men tagged, Chad Galusha, posted a meme, showing Hillary Clinton. It read, “The first woman in the U.S. to lose two presidential elections.”
He posted another showing a Clinton supporter crying. It read, “When everyone gets a trophy, you don’t know how to lose.”
McArthur swore at the men, told them to stop and tried to ignore it.
Galusha then posted another meme, reading, “Just a troll fishing for liberals.”
That’s when someone else wrote something about the men themselves.
“I was in complete disbelief. I only know great cops,” she said.
McArthur discovered James Coleman was, in fact, Deputy James Coleman of the Marion County Sheriff’s Office.
Chad Galusha was Officer Chad Galusha of the Salem Police Department.
McArthur said once that information was revealed, the men began deleting their comments. She managed to grab screenshots of some.
Read more: http://bit.ly/2gz3Lt3
© 2024 KOBI-TV NBC5. All rights reserved unless otherwise stated.