Melissa Rolfe is the stepmother of former police officer Garrett Rolfe, the man now facing 11 charges for the shooting of Rayshard Brooks. Until yesterday, Melissa worked for a mortgage company in Atlanta called Equity Prime Mortgage. But last night on his show, Tucker Carlson reported that Melissa had been fired.

Here’s the segment where Tucker Carlson revealed the stepmother of the ex-Atlanta officer’s firing: pic.twitter.com/CkOj0hTTmb

— Emily (Larsen) Brooks (@emilyelarsen) June 19, 2020

“Apparently she was fired and her only crime was being officer Rolfe’s step-mother,” Carlson said. He went on to say that she had been promised her job was safe and then was suddenly told “we have to terminate our relationship with you.” According to Carlson, no other explanation was given.

Sometime after Carlson’s segment aired, the company released a statement on her termination which they also posted on Twitter.

pic.twitter.com/vnQsDZxGoD

— EPM Plus (@epmplus) June 19, 2020

Notice that the statement is framed in a black square, similar to the ones many companies were using to show solidarity with Black Lives Matter a few days ago. I doubt that was accidental. The statement claims Rolfe’s “termination was a direct result of her actions in the workplace and violation of company policy.” It goes on to say that she “violated company policy and created an uncomfortable working environment for many of our employees.” The statement adds that “Melissa’s personal views” had created “a hostile work environment.”

They are clearly claiming she did something that upset people but they don’t tell us what it was. Under the circumstances, it’s not that hard to believe that Rolfe might have had some harsh words for the District Attorney or maybe for BLM. Maybe she confided in someone and word spread through the office. In this environment, it doesn’t take much to be considered outside the bounds of acceptable discourse. Or who knows, maybe she let loose with some kind of company-wide email.

But it’s also possible the company is lying through it’s teeth. Let’s face it, if you run a mortgage company in Atlanta and your company becomes known as the place where the mother of the cop who shot a black man works, you have a problem. So it’s not hard to imagine the company would find a way to ditch Melissa Rolfe because it was afraid of the backlash it would get if it didn’t.

It would be great if companies stood up for values like the presumption of innocence and a fair trial but as we’ve seen with the NBA and China, most companies don’t show a lot of backbone when doing so might hit the bottom line.

If it does turn out that Melissa Rolfe didn’t actually do anything that most people would consider grounds for termination, then this is a pretty chilling sign about where we’re headed at a country. Punishing relatives is something that happens in China or Soviet Russia. It’s not something we should want to see happen here. I guess we’ll have to wait and see what happens next. Now that she’s been fired, maybe Melissa will have something to say in public about what happened here.