Florida SWAT officer demoted after wearing QAnon patch in photo with Mike Pence
A SWAT officer in Broward County, Florida, has been demoted after he was photographed wearing a QAnon conspiracy theory patch when he greeted Vice President Mike Pence on Friday at Fort Lauderdale-Hollywood International Airport.
On his uniform, Matt Patten wore a patch reading “Question the Narrative,” which was not authorized by the Broward County Sheriff’s Office, according to the Miami New Times.
On Monday, the Broward County Sheriff’s Office issued a written reprimand to Patten, stating that the QAnon conspiracy theory was “controversial” and made the sheriff’s office seem “biased” politically.
“This resulted in negative ramifications on a national platform as a controversy for the Broward County Sheriff’s Office, the County, the SWAT team, and Sergeant Patten,” the reprimand read.
(Broward Sheriff's Office SWAT member Matt Patten (left) via Twitter/Mike Pence)
Patten was removed from the sheriff’s office’s strategic investigations division’s Office of Homeland Security and from the agency SWAT team, said Broward County Sheriff’s Office spokeswoman Veda Coleman-Wright.
He will now be reassigned to the Department of Law Enforcement, she told local station WPLG TV.
For those not in the know, the bizarre and dubious QAnon conspiracy theory suggests Donald Trump is actually working with special counsel Robert Mueller to uncover a deep-state cabal of elite liberal and Hollywood pedophiles.
Eventually, the theory goes, a bunch of high-ranking Democrats will end up imprisoned at the Guantanamo Bay U.S. military facility in Cuba.
In recent months, NBC News notes, QAnon followers have allegedly been involved in a foiled presidential assassination plot, a devastating California wildfire and an armed standoff with local law enforcement in Arizona.
This article originally appeared on HuffPost.
