Mason City employee under investigation for alleged racist social media comments

The City of Mason City is investigating an employee who has been accused of making racist comments on Facebook. 

On Tuesday afternoon, the page "Mason City for Justice" had a post featuring multiple screenshots from a Randy Jacobson making comments about someone's ethnicity, using derisive sexual terms and saying that George Floyd, who died on May 25 after Minneapolis Police Officer Derek Chauvin knelt on him for more than eight minutes, "needed to die" and was a "POS."

That comment originally appeared on a post in the Facebook group "North Iowa Rant and Rave" that was entitled "Thank You Derek Chauvin!" and has since been deleted.

Another now-deleted screenshot shows a post by Jacobson depicting a photo of a chicken named White Power, purportedly owned by Jacobson, which had to be put down. A similar post by Jacobson's wife seemed to corroborate the anecdote.

A social media search of Jacobson also uncovered public posts made to a Facebook group called Snowflake Central. One of which compared former NFL player Colin Kaepernick kneeling in peaceful protest to the killing of George Floyd.

In a comment about the matter, City Administrator Aaron Burnett said that the city is aware of the employee’s Facebook posts and the comments contained in the posts are offensive and racist.

"The City of Mason City does not support these statements in any way and takes very serious the nature of the content of the post [but] cannot comment on the details of an active personnel investigation," Burnett said in a phone interview.

When asked directly whether or not it was specifically Jacobson being investigated by the city, Burnett replied, "You have the post there." 

The city's employee handbook says that any known or suspected violation of its social media policy could result in disciplinary action, up to and including termination.

"When using personal social networks, employees should recognize that the information they post can impact their career and personal and professional reputations. Accordingly, employees should exercise judgment and discretion with the information that they post, as well as giving consideration to the appropriateness of inviting other employees to participate in posting, sharing, or creating content or comment," according to the policy.

The post and comment are far from the only examples of controversial content on the North Iowa Rant and Rave group page.

There are fake accounts using caricatured images of Jewish and black people as well as conspiratorial thinking about the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic and the nationwide protests against police brutality. In the case of the former, multiple posters asked the moderators to take the post down but to no avail. 

Multiple phone numbers possibly related to Jacobson were called for comment with no response.