El Paso Police violate city’s municipal code by liking political tweets

EL PASO, Texas -- If you follow El Paso Police's Traffic Twitter account to stay in the loop about crashes and traffic you might expect them to steer clear of expressing personal beliefs publicly, but that is not the case.

El Paso Police Traffic's Twitter account has been liking tweets supporting right-wing beliefs.

The El Paso Police Traffic account has more than 6-thousand followers on Twitter. Anyone can see which tweets the account has liked by clicking on the "likes" tab. If you follow this account, those likes can show up in your timeline. 

The city of El Paso's municipal code states showing a political bias -- including on an official account is prohibited. 

The most recent tweet liked by El Paso Police Traffic's Twitter account reads:

"Today is November 20th, 2022, and Joe Biden is the worst President in US history."

Below that one, you see someone using the account also liked a Kari Lake war room tweet quoting the lyrics from Tom Petty's wont back down, after Lake was defeated in the race for Arizona governor.

Lake is known for saying she denied the results of the 2020 presidential election, as she has done with her race. 

The Twitter page account has liked political tweets like those for months.

A tweet liked back in December of last year reads:

"Immigration Moratorium. "America is under attack. The Biden regime's open borders are allowing illegal aliens, sex traffickers, drug runners, and low life's to flood into our country by the millions".

ABC-7 looked up the City of El Paso municipal code. In a section on police policies and procedures, it states the following actions are prohibited:

"Using email or other electronic communications for political, religious, obscene, or derogatory purposes."

It also states, "The public information officers are responsible for all social media accounts and postings."

We reached out to El Paso Police for comment their Spokesman Enrique Carillo gave this response:

"We are looking into this matter. For now, we have taken immediate steps to stop this."

We also contacted the city about the liked tweets, but no one has given us a response. 

Police have not said who's behind the likes.  

So why does this matter?

It's not about which side of the aisle you're on. A city employee working for the police department is getting paid with taxpayer dollars. All the while their own city municipal code prohibits them from doing this very thing.