Brewer Deputy Mayor Thomas Morelli resigned on Wednesday after local police concluded that he wrote racist social media posts, then falsely claimed that his online accounts had been hacked.
On Monday, Morelli claimed that his Facebook account had been hacked after racist messages were posted from the account last weekend. Brewer Public Safety Director Jason Moffitt provided few details about the posts, but said they concerned the nationwide protests sparked by the death of George Floyd, the black man who died while in the custody of police in Minneapolis.
“All I can say is they were racist in nature, some of them, and they were centered around the protests occurring because of the Floyd killing,” he says.
Moffitt says the Brewer Police Department investigated Morelli’s complaint that his account had been hacked over the past few days.
“We continued with the investigation. We found that the comments had actually been made by Mr. Morelli himself, and that he had made a false report to the Brewer Police Department. So he was summoned for filing a false report,” he says.
Soon after the announcement by police on Wednesday by police, Brewer Mayor Jerry Goss announced that the city had unanimously accepted Morelli’s resignation. Goss says Morelli’s actions aren’t acceptable, and that city leaders want to be “part of a solution, not part of the problem.”
“And the bottom line is, behaviors and attitudes in this country need to change. We need to actually take solid steps for racial equality in this county. We’ve taken small steps, but not nearly enough to get the job done,” he says.
Morelli did not return requests for comment. But in a resignation letter released by the city on Wednesday, he apologized for the posts and said that he has “always welcomed people of all creeds, colors, genders and races as friends and clients.”
