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An officer with the St. Louis (MO) Police Department is facing an internal investigation after the St. Louis Post-Dispatch reprinted his Facebook post as an op-ed piece in the publication's print edition.

According to the St. Louis Post-Dispatch, Officer Ryan Lynch wrote a Facebook post in late August detailing a duty shift during which a 16-year-old was wounded and an 8-year-old child was shot and killed at a high school football scrimmage.

"Next thing I know, I'm holding the hand of a 16-year-old as he begs me not to let him die. The 8-year-old wasn’t that lucky. The city gave us its worst tonight and I’m just appalled," Lynch wrote.

Lynch went on to urge readers to write to state politicians with the message that police need their support.

The social media post was public, so when an editor saw it, they reached out to Lynch to get permission to run it in the opinion pages.

Lieutenant William Brown of the internal affairs division alleges that Lynch violated the department's special order forbidding employees from speaking to news media without proper authorization.

The St. Louis Police Officers' Association filed a grievance Wednesday, saying, in part, that Lynch did not "prepare the article" for the newspaper.