A reserve Edgewater police officer was suspended and is under investigation after his children appeared in a social media post handling a gun irresponsibly, police said Thursday.
In a video statement released Thursday afternoon, police Chief David Arcieri said he was made aware of a Facebook post in which "juveniles are handling and clowning around with firearms."
Arcieri said the weapons in the video were the officer's personal guns. The officer will be "relieved of duty" and his service weapon taken by the end of the day, the chief said. The officer's name was not released.
"I have zero tolerance for irresponsible gun ownership and we take this incident very seriously," Arcieri said in the video. "It is by the grace of God we didn't have an accidental shooting and a dead child on our hands. We're very thankful for that."
The matter initially was brought to the attention of the Port Orange Police Department. A mother reported it to police Wednesday after seeing the videos on her juvenile son's Snapchat account, according to an incident report.
Police said the videos featured two eighth-grade students, but the report did not include the name of the school they attended. None of the videos contained any "threats or signs of planned violence," according to police.
The weapons shown in the video died appear to be authentic firearms, police said.
Arcieri has requested that the Volusia County Sheriff's Office investigate the incident and said Edgewater will follow up with its own internal affairs probe.
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