Nueces County District Attorney Mark Gonzalez is answering his critics regarding a Facebook post where he used a controversial hashtag.
Gonzalez sent a letter on January 4, 2019, to all county law enforcement agencies informing them that “effective immediately, the office would no longer accept cases for 27 misdemeanors when the same suspect is facing a felony charge.” Since that letter was distributed, law enforcement officers, both active and retired, have voiced their opposition to and support of the new policy. Last week, Mark Gonzalez used social media to explain his decision for approving the policy and to respond to his critics.
However, yesterday, Gonzalez received backlash for sharing an officer’s Facebook post and using the hashtag symbol followed by FTP (#FTP) in his caption. Some took #ftp to mean “f*** the police” although Gonzalez insists it means “For The People.” So why did he delete the post with the hashtag?
“I wanted to share all their text. You look in the screenshot, his text doesn’t come out, it doesn’t show it. I wanted people to see what people were writing about me,” explained Gonzalez.
The D.A. added he still feels Facebook is an effective way to get his office’s message out, but he says he may not respond to individual comments on social media anymore.
