Julie Strebe #

Introduction #

Julie Strebe is a 55-year-old sheriff’s deputy who served for 19 years with the Dent County Sheriff’s Office in Salem, Missouri, and who was fired in October 2025 after social media comments she made about Charlie Kirk’s assassination were found to violate law-enforcement guidelines. Strebe, who posted “Empathy is not owed to oppressors” on her personal Facebook page days after Kirk was killed and called him a racist, a sexist and an antisemite in the comments beneath, became one of the most prominent named cases in the wave of more than 600 firings and punishments documented across the United States after the conservative activist’s death. Her case drew national attention both for the punishment itself and for the harassment campaign that surrounded it, which included a truck parked on her block bearing a cardboard sign reading “Julie Strebe Supports the Assassination of Charles Kirk”.

Background Information #

Strebe spent 19 years in law enforcement as a deputy in Dent County, a heavily Republican corner of the Missouri Ozarks whose seat, Salem, describes itself as a small Bible-belt town; her home county voted overwhelmingly to re-elect Donald Trump in the 2024 election. She worked as a patrol deputy in an office responsible for law enforcement across the county, and by her own account believed she had treated everyone fairly throughout her career. “I’ve been a cop for 19 years,” she told the Guardian. “I believe that everybody should be treated fairly. And that’s what I’ve done my entire career.” She and her husband were well known locally; his woodworking business and his charitable side gig, dressing as the Grinch to visit children’s hospitals over the holidays, had their own followings in the community.

The Controversy or Incident That Led to Their Cancellation #

On the afternoon of 13 September 2025, three days after Kirk’s assassination, Strebe was on a date with her husband at a Buffalo Wild Wings when he slid his phone across the table: on Facebook, people were demanding her immediate termination, calling her a “wacko” with “extreme mental health issues”. Shortly after the assassination she had posted on her personal Facebook page: “Empathy is not owed to oppressors”, and in comments underneath she called Kirk a racist, a sexist, an antisemite and the kind of person who wants to see gay people, like her own son, stoned to death. “I don’t feel bad,” she later said. “I refuse to feel bad for this man, and the hateful things he stood for.” She told her superiors she would take the posts down, but they had already been screenshotted and spread; complaints reached the sheriff’s office, which was made aware of the comments on 12 September, two days after the shooting.

Public Reaction and Consequences #

The Dent County Sheriff’s Office held a formal administrative hearing to determine whether her comments complied with the Law Enforcement Officers’ Bill of Rights, citing its commitment to “full compliance with RSMo 590.502 and all applicable case law”, and concluded that Strebe had violated department guidelines. She was suspended and then fired, with superiors pointing, per her account, to the posts having been made on the clock and without a disclaimer that they were her personal opinions. The office publicly wished her well and thanked her for her years of service, while insisting: “At the Dent County Sheriff’s Office, our focus remains on professionalism, accountability and serving the citizens of Dent County with integrity — not on ‘cancel culture,’ but on the continued mission of fair and effective law enforcement.” The backlash extended far beyond the termination: locals used homophobic slurs against her son online, her husband’s businesses were review-bombed, people lurked outside the family home, and the family set up security cameras before deciding to leave the town she had lived in for 20 years. “They screwed me because of the mob mentality,” Strebe said.

Current Status #

Strebe is no longer a law-enforcement officer; her firing from the Dent County Sheriff’s Office was confirmed publicly by the department in October 2025. She was not charged with any offence — her case concerned employment discipline, not criminal conduct — and no lawsuit by Strebe has been reported, in contrast to many fired public employees in the Kirk purge who have sued. As of early 2026 she and her family were packing up to move out of Salem, with the Guardian’s February 2026 investigation recording her among the hundreds of Americans fired or punished over Kirk posts whose cases had drawn calls for redress.

Impact on Their Career/Life #

The termination ended a 19-year law-enforcement career days after a handful of Facebook comments, and the surrounding harassment campaign cost her family its place in the community: her son was targeted with homophobic abuse, her husband’s customers fled, and the family decided to leave Salem altogether. Her case has become one of the standard cited examples — alongside other deputies, teachers and professors — in national coverage of the Kirk purge, invoked in arguments about public-employee speech rights, mob-led terminations, and the line between an officer’s private Facebook page and the uniform. Strebe herself has remained publicly unrepentant about the opinions, if not about what she sees as the injustice of her firing.