Suspended San Jose Cop:
"Threaten me or my family and I will use my God given and law appointed
right and duty to kill you."
Ed Krayewski|
There are a host of issues that
have to be addressed to effect effective police reform: overcriminalization,
lack of transparency and accountability, union-negotiated protections, racism,
and so on. In some states there's also the issue of self-defense. As a life-long
resident of New Jersey, it always made me uncomfortable that the local super
market could hire someone licensed to carry a firearm to protect their store
but I was not permitted a license to carry a firearm to protect myself or my
family. These, I suppose, are progressive values: you can exercise a right when
you have the wealth to influence the state. New Jersey has some of the
strictest gun laws in the country. But these laws, in New Jersey and elsewhere,
rarely apply to law enforcement, on or off-duty. New York state recently passed
new anti-gun legislation they forgot to exempt all police from and worked
diligently to correct their mistake.
This disparity between the
right to bear arms for the "civilian" and the right to bear arms for
government agents is another issue that makes the questions of police reform so
"complex" because it contributes to the sense that police officers
and other government employees are a different class of citizen, with different
rights and privileges, than those of us who pay their salaries.
Take this not unique attitude a
cop in San Jose, now suspended over his comments, had no fear sharing publicly.
Via CBS News:
In one of his tweets, [Officer
Phillip] White said: "Threaten me or my family and I will use my God given
and law appointed right and duty to kill you. #CopsLivesMatter."
In another, he said he would be
off-duty at the movies with his gun if anyone "feels they can't breathe or
their lives matter."
The tweets and hashtag played
on protest slogans "I can't breathe" and "black lives
matter."
Efforts to reach White through
the San Jose Police Officer's Association were not successful.
The tweets and White's Twitter
account have been deleted amid a social media firestorm over the comments.
White's department, union and a college where he coached basketball all
condemned the comments.
White was suspended with pay
and not fired, not just because of the police officer's association but because
California actually has enshrined job security for cops and other public employees
into its state laws, be they unionized or not.
White talks about his "God
given" and "law appointed" right to use lethal force in
self-defense, confusing natural rights with government privileges not just
because he's probably not that intelligent but also because of the systematic
effort in this country by the establishment to confuse rights and privileges
while curtailing natural rights like the right to bear arms from self-defense
as much as they can get away with.
In California, Phillip White,
who saw nothing wrong with going on social media to announce his right to
defend himself and his family using lethal force in the context of peaceful
protesters, and other law enforcement officials across the state enjoy the
right to defend themselves and their families, on or off duty, using a service
weapon paid for by taxpayers who the state treats like criminals when it comes
to exercising the right to self-defense.
Parity between the rights and
privileges of citizens and the rights and privileges of government employees is
a crucial first step toward any kind of substantive change in the attitudes
held by too many cops.
