Denton County Sheriff Tracy Murphree lit a social media firestorm Tuesday after posting a Facebook response to Monday’s deadly bombing in Manchester, England.
In the post, which Murphree wrote Monday night, he warns against “Islamic Jihadists” who “want to kill you.” He also warned against potential terrorist attacks in Denton County, though he said Tuesday he didn’t have evidence of any recent terrorist threats in the area.
The Islamic State extremist group claimed responsibility for the attack that left 22 people dead and dozens more wounded Monday at a pop concert in Manchester Arena. By Tuesday afternoon, the terrorist threat level in Britain rose to its highest level, indicating another attack could be imminent.
“This enemy will strap bombs to their own body and blow themselves up killing children,” Murphree said in the post. “I’m sick of it. You better wake up America. While you are distracted by the media and the crying of the left, Islamic Jihadists are among us and want to kill you.”
Murphree received online criticism that the post, which garnered 900 shares and nearly 1,600 “likes” by Tuesday evening, was a form of fearmongering. But the sheriff stood behind his words during a phone interview Tuesday morning.
“When children as young as the age of 8 are being blown up at a concert, that concerns me,” he said during the interview. “That makes me angry. That makes me not want that to happen here. People can be politically correct and try not to hurt people’s feelings, but the fact remains there is a radical element that wants to come here and kill us.”
He also said he wasn’t talking about the entire religion of Islam when he referred to “a religious ideology that says you must convert or die” in his post.
“If it’s a secret to anybody that there is a radical element in the Muslim religion with ISIS and terrorists, then they’ve had their head in the sand,” he said.
Murphree, a former Texas Ranger in Denton and Cooke counties, focused on improving local anti-terrorism efforts during his 2016 campaign. He reassigned a sheriff’s office representative to the FBI’s Joint Terrorism Task Force shortly after taking office in January.
He also expressed his concerns about local terrorist attacks during an interview with the Record-Chronicle in December.
"[Trump] is actually going to use words like ‘Islamic terrorist’ or ‘extreme Islam’ that the current president has never uttered,” Murphree said during the December interview. “In the long term, that’s going to be fantastic because we’re going to be more vigilant and take care of business, but in the short term — and when I say the short term, I’m talking some years — they’re going to attack us.”
This is the second time Murphree has faced public criticism for a Facebook post. In response to the controversy surrounding transgender people and their use of public bathrooms, he said, “If my little girl is in a public women’s restroom and a man, regardless of how he may identify, goes into the bathroom, he will then identify as a John Doe until he wakes up in whatever hospital he may be taken to.”
He later removed that post and told WFAA-TV (Channel 8) he regretted saying he would assault someone.