Is a New York Police Department memo that says all uniformed members must start displaying their pronouns starting January 1, 2025, authentic? No, that's not true: A spokesperson for the NYPD told Lead Stories that the memo is fake. It also misspells the words "authority" and "inputted", further indicators that it's not authentic.
The claim appeared in a post (archived here) on X, formerly known as Twitter, on September 12, 2024. The post included the supposed memo and read:
TO PANDER & SERVE: NYPD says effective January 1, all members of the department must display their 'pronouns'
This is what the post looked like at the time of writing:
(Source: X screenshot taken on Fri Sep 13 6:33:22 2024 UTC)
Lead Stories contacted the NYPD to ask about the claim. In an email, dated September 13, 2024, a spokesperson responded, in reference to the post on X:
That is not a real message.
At the bottom of the memo, the word "authority" is misspelled, adding support to the fact that it's not an authentic NYPD memo.
Other Lead Stories fact checks that center on people's personal pronouns can be found here.
