ST. CLOUD, Fla. – Marcos Lopez, charged with two felony counts of racketeering and facing a prolonged suspension as Osceola County Sheriff, now confronts challenges beyond being ridiculed on social media.
The public backlash against his alleged misconduct is evident. On Facebook, memes quickly gained popularity on Thursday and Friday, highlighting a common theme: Lopez’s perceived double standard.
While serving as sheriff, Lopez regularly took to Facebook to showcase suspects apprehended by his deputies. In these videos, he would describe the purported offenses with a tone of derision, often using flashy graphics that belittled the suspects.
At times, he would turn to one word to describe an alleged criminal: “Charlatan.”
Hours after his arrest, someone decided to turn his tagline against him.
“I haven’t been shy about my lack of taste for him since he was elected the first time,” said Stephanie Chmielewski, the general manager of Canoe Creek Sports Tavern in Saint Cloud.
Chmielewski and another employee designed a graphic Thursday night, featuring a picture of Lopez’s mugshot, below the “WANTED.”
The poster advertised a new name for the restaurant’s cheeseburger: “The Charlatan Burger.”
“I just don’t feel like he’s ever put the citizens first and it’s just been about him and his friends and not about our county,” she said. “And if he’s found guilty, that kind of proves what I thought.”
The post garnered hundreds of engagements. Thursday night, Chmielewski said, Canoe Creek ran out of hamburger buns.
“We were slammed last night,” she said Friday. “We sold a lot of them.”
News 6 spoke to Douglas Cox as he sipped on a beer around lunchtime at the restaurant.
“I’m pretty surprised,” Cox said, when recounting how he felt when he learned of Lopez’s arrest. “It’s like, ‘How do you do this?’”
Cox, who used to be a member of law enforcement, said he voted for Lopez in 2020. He soon came to regret his vote.
“I thought he was the right person for the job at the time,” he said. “Not now.”
When News 6 was not at the restaurant, we worked to find out more information about operations at the Osceola County Sheriff’s Office.
We learned Friday that interim Sheriff Christopher Blackmon was going to be out of the office for a week, a day after he was named to his new position.
In an attempt to learn more about the future of Lopez’s support staff, News 6’s Mike Valente went into the sheriff’s administration complex on Friday.
A person at the front desk said the media relations employees were tied up in meetings all day.
News 6 did determine that a biography page on the agency’s website belonging to one of Lopez’s support staff member is no longer active.
When loading the page, we received a ’404 ERROR.’
A trip to that person’s house did not yield any results. No one answered the door, but neighbors told News 6 they saw the person in question — along with another person — going in and out of the house, bringing bags to two cars. The neighbors said they appeared to be in a “hurry,” but it was not clear where they were going.
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