Lafayette Police address the hiring and firing of officer tied to Neo-Nazi group

The Lafayette police department is not making any excuses for hiring a police officer tied to a Neo-Nazi group.

Instead, they are saying they need stronger background checks so this does not happen again.

Department isn't making any excuses for hiring a police officer tied to a neo- nazi group.

Instead they are saying they need stronger backgrounds check so this doesnt happen again.

"this was a mistake and we own it 100 percent and we are going to do everything we can to make sure it doesn't happen again."- bard bishop back in june of this year the lafayette police department hired this man joseph zacharek (zuh-hair-ic).

As we previously reported an anonymous twitter account tagged lpd in a tweet containing information they found showing zachark participating in a neo- nazi internet chat forum known as iron march in 2016.

"i'm devastated i'm embarrassed and i'm dedicated to making sure this never happens again."- bishop once lpd confirmed that the information they recieved on twitter was true they fired zacharek.

The department says if not for the tweet, they never would have known about zacharek's participation in a hate group forum.

"the blog that he partcipated in had been shutdown in 2018 so it was not searchable that information was gained illegally by a hacker which made it accessible to us."- bishop kirk freeman is lawyer in tippecanoe county..

He says it's hard believe that lpd missed this in the background check with as much technology that they have.

Especially with how the twitter account that exposed this information describes themselves.

"the nazi was found by a 40 year old soccer mom at her breakfast nook with a lap top.

Freeman thinks the police aren't taking this serious enough.

"i don't think they understand how deep the anger goes.

It's is a complete and utter betrayal of trust."

However lpd says they want to expand training and background checks so that no one slips through the cracks.

"these are not the type of people that we want at the lafayette police department now do i believe are these the type of people that i believe we have at the lafayette police department."

Lpd says that zacharek didn't have any complaints during his training for making or saying any sort of racist statements.

They added that they (aren't( investigating any other police officers so similar behavior.

This week will determine the fate