A Colorado police officer was terminated after posting a photo with a controversial caption on social media, the Denver Police Department said in a statement. 

The department launched an investigation on Monday after Officer Thomas McClay reportedly shared a photo of himself and two other Denver officers in riot gear with the caption “Let’s start a riot,” referencing the city’s nights of protests over the death of George Floyd. 

An investigation revealed McClay’s post violated the department’s social media policy and was inconsistent with the values of the department, leading to his termination, the Denver Police Department said. The other two officers in the photo remain with the department and are not under investigation, NBC News affiliate KUSA reported.

Facebook’s Oversight Board said Wednesday that it is not ready for action — but that it's pushing to get set up. 

“We are not in an immediate position to make decisions on issues like those we see unfolding today,” the board, which will make decisions about thorny content issues on Facebook and Facebook-owned Instagram, said in its third update. 

The entity said training was beginning for its 20 initial members, which include former world leaders, academics and human rights advocates from all corners of the globe. 

Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg said he would create the body in a post last November. The Oversight Board has been dubbed a kind of Supreme Court for a global organization that reaches two billion users.  

The post comes during fierce debates about whether Faceebook should do anything about inflammatory statements made by President Trump. The board said it would begin to operate later this year, hearing issues such as how Facebook treats posts by public figures that might violate its standards. It did not say whether that would be ahead of the upcoming U.S. elections.

The former Minneapolis police officers charged in the death of George Floyd each face a maximum sentence of 40 years in prison if convicted of the charges against them, according to criminal complaints.

The three former officers, Tou Thao, Thomas Lane and J. Alexander Kueng, were charged with aiding and abetting murder, according to criminal complaints filed by the state of Minnesota.

The murder charge against the fourth, Derek Chauvin, was also elevated to second-degree, from third-degree. He still faces both the third-degree and manslaughter charges as well, according to an amended complaint.

All four officers were fired on May 26, after a video showing Floyd's arrest went viral.One of the officers was in custody while another two were in the process of being put in custody, officials said Wednesday.

Read the full story here.

HOUSTON — As protesters clash with riot squads in cities across the country, Houston Police Chief Art Acevedo has drawn national praise for his willingness to march with activists and call for officers to be held accountable when they kill without justification.

But on Tuesday, some protesters in Houston confronted Acevedo over his record on police violence. They wanted to know why his department had refused to release body camera footage from six recent deadly police shootings in Houston. Some in the crowd shouted insults, calling Acevedo a “f------ liar” and a “hypocrite.” 

The tense moment highlighted a growing frustration simmering among activists in Houston who have accused Acevedo of striking a conciliatory tone during national media interviews, but then failing to back up his words with reforms in his own department. 

Read the full story here. 

The D.C. National Guard has opened an investigation after military helicopters were flown low over protesters on Monday evening, the agency announced Wednesday. 

A video of the maneuver, which has gone viral on Twitter and garnered over 1.8 million views, shows a helicopter flying lower than building height, kicking up debris and knocking branches off trees.

"I hold all members of the District of Columbia National Guard to the highest of standards,” Commanding General Major General William J. Walker said in a statement. “We live and work in the District, and we are dedicated to the service of our nation.”

Specifically, Walker said that the agency is investigating the use of medical evacuation helicopters as part of the Joint Task Force DC operation. The D.C. National Guard was mobilized earlier in the week to assist in the response to protests that have gripped the nation over the death of George Floyd.

Former President Jimmy Carter issued a statement Wednesday about the nationwide protests sparked by the killing of George Floyd in police custody, calling for people of privilege and power to stand up against racism.

"Since leaving the White House in 1981, Rosalynn and I have strived to advance human rights in countries around the world. In this quest, we have seen that silence can be as deadly as violence," Carter said in the statement.

“People of power, privilege, and moral conscience must stand up and say 'no more' to a racially discriminatory police and justice system, immoral economic disparities between whites and blacks, and government actions that undermine our unified democracy,” he added. “We need a government as good as its people, and we are better than this.”

Carter was quick to condemn violence — "But violence, whether spontaneous or consciously incited, is not a solution," the former president said  — but also pointed to discriminatory policing as a key issue. He also acknowledged “with sorrow and disappointment” that he was repeating the same calls for an end to discrimination that he’d made nearly 50 years ago when he was inaugurated governor of Georgia.

The former president won strong support from black voters during his time in politics, but came under fire during his first presidential bid for saying the federal government shouldn’t try to change the “ethnic purity” of neighborhoods by putting public housing in middle-class parts of the cities. Afterward, Carter apologized profusely: "I would sooner withdraw from the race then use racist appeals to win it," he said.

In the parlance of the internet, the past week has been a year. So much has happened to shock those optimistic about the state of racial equity and affirm those always in tune with the persistence of racism in American life that the strain of the last 10 days has been extraordinary.

But black Americans are exhausted. They are grieving. They are angry. They have, in many cases, grown tired of being forced to make the case for their citizenship, their humanity, their very survival — again and again over the course of generations.

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Louisville, Kentucky, a city already grappling with the police shooting death of Breonna Taylor nearly three months ago, faced renewed anguish this week with another police shooting that killed beloved business owner David McAtee.

McAtee was in a parking lot next to his barbecue stand, YaYa's Barbecue, early Monday when Louisville police officers and the National Guard went to break up a crowd in violation of a recently mandated curfew.

The crowd that the police and National Guard was trying to disperse wasn’t part of protests, according to NBC Louisville affiliate WAVE, and people often congregate in the parking lot of McAtee’s restaurant to eat and play music.

His mother said he would give out free meals to community members, including officers of the same police department that fired shots at him.

Read the full story here.