Los Angeles Police Department Recruitment Ads End Up on Right-Wing Breitbart Website

A recruiting advertisement for The Los Angeles Police Department (LAPD) somehow ended up on the alt-right, extremist news website Breitbart.

The advertisement was first tweeted about by Daily Beast Editor in Chief Noah Shachtman, and the LAPD quickly faced intense backlash on social media, The Washington Post reported.

In a statement, the LAPD said that it didn’t initially know how the advertisement ended up on Breitbart.

“The LAPD celebrates diversity and embraces it within our ranks, and within the city we serve,” the department said Saturday. LAPD also said the advertisement was “a negative juxtaposition to our core values.”

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LAPD had gone so far as to say that the advertisement could have been a spoof before it was discovered how the advertisement ended up on Breitbart, the Post reported.

“No. LAPD did NOT purchase or otherwise acquire ad space on that website,” Police Chief Michel Moore said on Twitter. “Senior leadership at ads City Personnel Department also relayed they did not authorize or pay for this ad either.”

On Saturday, LAPD revealed that they bought advertisement space through Google Ads, and that’s how their recruiting efforts ended up on the site. As an advertiser, you can choose not to have your ads run on particular sites, but ultimately it’s Google’s system that decides where ads are placed.

“We have stopped these Google Ads altogether while we reexamine our ad filters and take all necessary steps to ensure tighter control of ad settings,” the department said.

Breitbart spokeswoman Elizabeth Moore told the Los Angeles Times in a statement that their website has “strong readership among the rank-and-file in the LAPD.”

Here are several of Breitbart’s more blatantly racist and misogynistic headlines:

  • “The Smartest People in the World Are All Men”
  • “Birth Control Makes Women Unattractive and Crazy”
  • “Bill Kristol: Republican spoiler, renegade Jew”
  • “Data: Young Muslims Are a Ticking Time Bomb in the West.”

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