West Philadelphia's 19th Police District office shares its building on Haverford Avenue with the Philadelphia Fire Department’s medic unit 23. This week, relations between the two departments got a bit tense.

Marcell Salters is a paramedic stationed in that building. According to media reports, Salters posted on Instagram what Mayor Nutter referred to as a “reprehensible message,” a photo of two Black men pointing guns at a white police officer with the message, “our real enemy. Need 2 stop pointing guns at each other and at the ones that’s legally killing innocents.” He then went on to post about “crooked and corrupted cops (mostly white)” who “harass, beat or kill innocents (mostly blacks).”

Local police union president John McNesby responded to with outrage.

"It's despicable, and it defames police," McNesby told Fox 29 News. "It's a brotherhood. We are out there doing the same work public safety and to do something like that is ridiculously stupid.”

Salters later apologized with another Facebook post: "That post was out of anger of what is going on around the world (Mike Brown, Eric Garner & etc.) & past experiences that I've had with police. My intention was not to slander or hurt anyone or my brothers in blue. Again I am sorry."

Mayor Nutter called for Fire Commissioner Derrick Sawyer to “undertake a thorough investigation and invoke whatever discipline is warranted in this circumstance.”

McNesby himself made some outrage-inducing statements this week. At a ceremony awarding officers for valor on Wednesday, McNesby decried peaceful Philadelphia demonstrations against the police killings of Michael Brown in Ferguson and Eric Garner in New York. He described protesters as “media-fueled,” “inspired lynch mobs,” who were “stirring up trouble.”

The Philadelphia Inquirer wrote that McNesby defended the police killing of Brandon Tate-Brown during a Mayfair traffic stop this week, who he described as a “convicted, violent felon [...] in possession of a stolen, loaded firearm.”

The National Action Network, a group led nationally by Rev. Al Sharpton and locally by Matthew Smith, held a vigil at the place where Tate-Brown died on Monday. McNesby called the demonstrators “thugs.” A police report said police stopped Tate-Brown for driving in the dark without headlights. Tate-Brown reportedly reached to retrieve a handgun from the passenger side. He was shot once in the head.  

“What else do you want us to do? We’re not going to call a timeout,” McNesby said, arguing that police are tired of people demonstrating police shootings, and then failing to cooperate on a shooting in their own neighborhood.

This year, 25 people were shot by police. Four of those shootings proved fatal. Eight police officers have been killed in the past seven years. Mayor Nutter has not publicly commented on McNesby's statements.