Fact Check

Ben and Jerry's 'Hate Cops'?

An image showing the founders of Ben & Jerry's Ice Cream holding a "We Hate Cops" sign has been photoshopped.

Published Oct. 9, 2016

Claim:
A photograph shows the founders of Ben & Jerry's holding a sign that reads "We Hate Cops."

An image purportedly showing the founders of Ben & Jerry's Ice Cream, Ben Cohen and Jerry Greenfield, holding a sign reading "We Hate Cops" was widely circulated on social media in October 2016:

ben and jerry hate cops

The above-displayed image is fake. The real image was taken on 19 April 2016 and shows Cohen and Greenfiled holding a Bernie Sanders sign at a protest for voting and campaign reforms in Washington D.C.:

The doctored image showing the founders of Ben & Jerry's holding a "we hate cops" sign started circulating on social media on or around 7 October 2016, shortly after the company released a statement in support of the Black Lives Matter movement:

Black lives matter.

They matter because they are children, brothers, sisters, mothers, and fathers.

They matter because the injustices they face steal from all of us — white people and people of color alike. They steal our very humanity.

Systemic and institutionalized racism are the defining civil rights and social justice issues of our time. We’ve come to understand that to be silent about the violence and threats to the lives and well-being of Black people is to be complicit in that violence and those threats.

[...]

All lives do matter. But all lives will not matter until Black lives matter.

We ask people to be open to understanding these issues, and not to reflexively retreat to our current beliefs. Change happens when people are willing to listen and hear the struggles of their neighbor, putting aside preconceived notions and truly seeking to understand and grow. We’ll be working hard on that, and ask you to as well.

Dan Evon is a former writer for Snopes.