Columbia Police Department: Restrictions on Facebook Page Comments

The Columbia Police Department in South Carolina maintains a written policy warning that “any comments that are inappropriate, threatening or offensive, include personal information about another person or that violate a person’s privacy interests, or include copyrighted material belonging to another person,” may be removed from its Facebook page. On June 25, 2026, the department also posted that it will not tolerate “vulgar, racist, threatening, bullying, and disrespectful comments.” The post was accompanied by an image with the text “WE HAVE ZERO TOLERANCE FOR HATE SPEECH” and a photo of a police officer holding a phone with the text “BLOCK LIST LOADING” on its screen. 

On August 6, FIRE wrote CPD, explaining that the restrictions violate the First Amendment.