Shawnee Mission wants to know who faked racist ‘Obama Shed’ on school property
Parents of Shawnee Mission East High School students took to Facebook this week to express outrage over a fake grocery, called the “Obama Shed,” located, according to Google Maps, on school property.
Google Maps showed the Obama Shed, which also had a fake business website, behind the school in Prairie Village, right near the athletic track. There is no such place.
The fake website referred to racist stereotypes, offering this description: “Obama’s shed please do not come outside of business hours as Obama is usually sleeping and you might wake him up hours are later on friday so obama can get his beauty sleep open 24 hours on black friday though.”
This is sickening. I am reporting this to the Chief of police at the PVPD (Prairie Village Police Department) right now,” Inga Eriksmoen Selders posted on Facebook.
“You have got to be kidding!” Darryl Williams posted. “This has to stop! And while the kids will be the focal point, this starts at home. Truly sad.”
“This is ridiculous!!!!!!” wrote Latonya Barber. “I hope the Shawnee Mission School District or someone who can will do something about this.”
A phone number attached to the site appeared to be in Louisiana. When a Star reporter called, there was no answer.
District officials complained to Google as soon as they learned about it, and Google removed it. But district officials said they still want to find out if this was done by a student, an employee or someone who is in no way connected to the district.
Spokesman David Smith said district officials may not have the forensic capacity to track down the person behind it. “We are certainly checking into it,” Smith said.
Google declined to say whether it is investigating the incident.
“Google Maps receives more than 20 million user contributions a day and the vast majority of these are accurate and helpful for our users,” Ben Jose, a Google spokesman, told The Star in an email.
He said anyone with a Google account can provide information to Google Maps, including “adding a new place to the map or editing information about an existing place.”
But, he said, “contributions to Google Maps must be based on real experiences and information. Deliberately fake content, copied or stolen photos, off-topic reviews, defamatory language, personal attacks, and unnecessary or incorrect content are all in violation of our policy.”
Jose said Google removes such content either automatically or manually. “We continually work to identify and remove content that violates our policies, and encourage people to flag any such content so that we can review and take action.”
Google prevents repeat violators from contributing, Jose said.
