A police officer has quit after admitting he lied about a McDonald’s worker writing ‘f*cking pig’ on his coffee cup.
The officer, aged 23, said it had begun as a joke before getting out of hand, and he has since resigned from his post.
Brian Hornaday, the police chief in Herington in Kansas, USA, said the story had been ‘completely and solely fabricated’. He chose not to name the officer in question, however he did say he had been with the department for around two months after spending five years in the army.
Hornaday went on to ‘applaud’ McDonald’s for conducting its own investigation following the accusations, and for co-operating in the department’s.
At a public press conference, he said:
We found that McDonald’s and its employees did not have anything whatsoever to do with this incident. This was completely and solely fabricated by a Herington police officer who is no longer employed with our agency.
Hornaday said it is ‘absolutely a black eye on law enforcement’, calling the incident an ‘obvious violation’ of the public’s trust.
The McDonald’s in Junction City refuted the allegations made by the unnamed officer, who claimed he was given a cup of coffee with the words ‘f*cking pig’ written on it, on his way into work.
Dana Cook, who owns the branch of McDonald’s, said in a statement that the restaurant has CCTV which proved none of the staff working there had written the words.
She wrote:
My McDonald’s have the utmost respect for all members of law enforcement and the military and were troubled by the accusation made.
We thoroughly reviewed our security video from every angle, which clearly shows the words were not written by one of our employees. We look forward to working with Chief Hornaday as he continues his investigation.
In the initial Facebook post made by Hornaday, he said that one of his officers was handed the cup when he went through the McDonald’s drive-thru on Saturday.
He wrote:
This behaviour has been, is and always will be wrong.
Speaking to WIBW-TV, Hornaday has since said his initial report was based on believing that a police officer would have integrity and ‘would be foolish of any law enforcement agency or professional to not take the word of their police officer until they can be proven otherwise’.
Hornaday went on to say he had spoken with the local prosecutor and that criminal charges were not sought against the former officer at this moment in time.
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Emma Rosemurgey is an NCTJ trained Journalist who started her career by producing The Royal Rosemurgey newspaper in 2004, which kept her family up to date with the goings on of her sleepy north east village. She graduated from the University of Central Lancashire in Preston and started her career in regional newspapers before joining Tyla (formerly Pretty 52) in 2017, and progressing onto UNILAD in 2019.