It was the end of an era.
In the days after the officer’s death, police departments across the country scrambled to develop their own memes, with memes that were intended to capture the energy and humor of the moment.
A Facebook group called The PoliceMeme Project was started in 2015 by former San Francisco Police Department officer John A. Coughlin, who wanted to create a “meme of the day” that was a little different from the norm.
It had a theme, Coughlins said, which was a cop who didn’t look like a cop and a cop that didn’t like the way you looked at him.
And it would have to be a meme that would get the attention of people who didn, in fact, look like cops, and it would also have to have some sort of impact on them.
And in some ways, it succeeded, said John W. McAllister, the president of the group.
“It’s kind of an embarrassment to the city, and a shame, really, to the department, because it was an effort that was really meant to be,” McAllisters told the Los Angeles Times.
And as the group grew, it also became a repository for other memes.
The group, for instance, was the home of the cop-and-drug meme.
Cops and drugs are often the themes of memes, said Coughlen, who was a police officer for 23 years and retired in 2017.
Caught in the middle of the controversy were some of the most popular memes.
In one of the memes, a police car is surrounded by a rainbow of different drugs, with a cop sitting on top of one and a girl on the other.
The cop on top is holding a lighter, which he’s trying to light.
The girl is holding her hair out, looking very sad.
“I think that that meme has a lot of people talking about it,” McInerney said.
“We’ve been trying to figure out why it’s gotten so bad.
It has to do with a combination of a lack of communication with the public, a lack or lack of understanding of what the situation was that led to this.
We need to understand the people who were in this position.”
McInerson said he’s heard from police officers who’ve tried to distance themselves from the meme.
“They’re very aware of the negative things that have been said about them and the way it has been misconstrued,” he said.
But, he added, it’s important to remember that this meme was created in response to a death, not a tragedy.
The meme has even spawned a YouTube video that shows a police sergeant explaining how to use a lighter to light a cop’s cigarette.
“When I put it out, I lit it and then I walked away,” the sergeant says.
“And then the next time I saw him, he was still standing there with his cigarette, so I just thought I was wasting my time.
I was like, I don’t want to waste my time anymore.”
McAlliers said that meme is part of a larger phenomenon in which police departments are looking for new ways to get attention and to make their officers feel special.
“This meme is a great way to get people to think about the police,” McAlister said.
