Supporters of Michael Slager, the white police officer who faces a murder charge for shooting Walter Scott, an unarmed black man in South Carolina, have started a campaign on the popular crowd funding site, Indiegogo.
It has become a familiar pattern in hot button news stories around the country: a small-town resident goes viral for doing something perceived as bigoted or unjust by the Greek chorus of social media. National news and online scorn follow. But sometimes the people being attacked online receive support in the form of dollars - sometimes, lots of dollars.
It's what happened to Darren Wilson, the officer who killed Michael Brown in Ferguson, Missouri. Several pages on GoFundMe set up in his name reportedly brought in between $500,000-$1m (£336,323-£672,646).
It's what happened to the owners of Memories Pizza, who told news crews in Indiana that they would not cater a gay wedding. They received $840,000 in support with the fundraiser still ongoing.
The large sums can seem counterintuitive to the conventional wisdom - and that is often the point.
"There is fairly good evidence that crowd funding is about these communities who feel like they are being ignored coming together to make something happen they want to see," Ethan Mollick, a professor at the Wharton School, told Trending. "That can be TV fans funding a movie version of a show that was cancelled, or it can be opponents of same-sex marriage who feel like their views are under attack."
Now, a new fundraiser has been established in support of Michael Slager, the police officer arrested for shooting to death South Caroline man Walter Scott. "Ofc Michael Slager deserves a competent defense no matter what the court of popular opinion says about his actions," his backers wrote on Twitter.
GoFundMe rejected a campaign to help Slager, according to the organisers of the @MichaelSalgerDefense's Twitter account - which on Wednesday night had fewer than 50 followers.
"After review by our team, the campaign set up for Officer Slager was removed from GoFundMe due to a violation of our Terms & Conditions," wrote a GoFundMe spokeswoman.
After the site hosted fundraisers for Darren Wilson, social advocacy group Color of Changes used the hashtag #DontFundHate and erected a billboard with the slogan near the crowd funding company's offices in San Diego. Although Shield of Hope, a group behind the campaign, halted fundraising efforts briefly, GoFundMe decided not to take the page down.
The company did, however, make changes to their policies in September 2014, which had already stated that they prohibit "items that promote hate, violence, racial intolerance, or the financial exploitation of a crime."
GoFundMe did not respond to requests as to which specific violation had been committed in this case.
Backers for Officer Slager were able to establish a site on Indiegogo, however. "We don't judge the content of campaigns as long as they are in compliance with our Terms of Use," the company told the BBC.
So far this campaign has been far less successful than others, raising less than $10
