A top official with the union that represents officers with the Philadelphia Police Department said that any firings of officers due to their posts on Facebook would be "completely out of bounds."

According to the Philadelphia Inquirer, Vice President John McGrody of Fraternal Order of Police Lodge 5 said, "I don't believe any Facebook posts merit firing, based on discipline that’s been handed out through the years."

McGrody was responding to comments made by Philadelphia Police Commissioner Richard Ross as he announced that he was taking 72 officers off the streets and placing them on desk duty while an investigation is conducted into comments they made on social media.

Those comments were published by an organization called the Plain View Project, which spent two years collecting and putting into a database social media posts and comments by officers in Philadelphia, Dallas, Phoenix, St. Louis, and elsewhere.

Many of those agencies have subsequently launched extensive internal investigations into the online behavior of their officers, and Philadelphia is among them.