Paul Smith, a chief at Pennsylvania's Cecil Township Volunteer Fire Station #2, didn't exactly critique the team as a whole, but instead opted for a different route — he went full force onto Mike Tomlin, the Steelers coach.
"Tomlin just added himself to the list of no good n*ggers," Smith, currently on vacation, wrote on Facebook. "Yes I said it."
"I'm completely upset, especially for a town like this, coming from the fire chief, that's disrespectful in my eyes," Dylan Pareso told local Pittsburgh station KDKA. "I don't agree with it one bit."
Another resident had similar sentiments.
"For a fire chief or for anybody like that to say something is wrong," Mary Plumley told the outlet. "They don't need to be in that position."
The opinion of social media netizens didn't stray far from that in the township.
— Dan McCulley (@abq_fella) September 26, 2017
— trplback (@trplback) September 26, 2017
After realizing the mounting media crisis he triggered, Smith quickly issued a statement to KDKA.
"I am embarrassed by this. I want to apologize. I was frustrated and angry at the Steelers not standing the anthem. This had nothing to do with my Fire Department. I regret what I said," the chief wrote.
But he wasn't done yet.
Despite the apologies, Cecil's township manager later issued a statement on Tuesday announcing Smith would no longer be serving as the chief for the volunteer company.
Several teams across the National Football League took a knee, locked arms, or remained in their locker rooms in response to US President Donald Trump's "sons of b*itches" remark regarding players not standing for the national anthem. The protest, first sparked by Colin Kaepernick in 2016, began as a means to decry social and racial injustice in the US, in particular the poor treatment of racial minorities at the hands of police.
