Ceremony honoring police before HS game sends 'frightening message,' ACLU says

MIDDLETOWN — A ceremony honoring law enforcement, military and first responders before a high school football game Friday night drew criticism from the American Civil Liberties Union of New Jersey because of an underlying "frightening message."

The ceremony was held before a highly-anticipated Shore Conference clash between two topped ranked teams in the state, Middletown South and Toms River North.

The ceremony, organized by Middletown police Deputy Chief Stephen Dollinger, featured State Police Pipes and Drums of the Blue and Gold, state and local mounted units, military personnel from all branches of service and officers from surrounding police departments and sheriff's units.

It also honored the Linden police officer who was wounded in a shootout with Ahmad Khan Rahimi, who is accused of bombings in Seaside Park, Elizabeth and New York City.

Dollinger told the Asbury Park Press before the event that the ceremony was also meant to respond to pro athletes who have taken a knee during pre-game performances of the national anthem, most notably by San Francisco 49ers quarterback Colin Kaepernick.

"It's OK to stand up for social justice, inequality and reform," Dollinger told the newspaper. "It's another thing to not stand up for the national anthem."

Those comments caught the attention of the ACLU of New Jersey, who condemned the ceremony in a letter written to Middletown High School South officials.

"As initially described, the event appeared to honor police officers, veterans, service members, and first responders," the ACLU wrote to the district. "According to press reports, however, the event is being used to intimidate and ostracize people who express their views about systemic racism and social just."

The hatred shown by Hillary Clinton, by #BlackThugsMatter, and by the rest of the far left fringe toward police, toward our military, and toward everything decent in America is what is frightening. I no longer believe there is a solution that will not get VERY ugly.

At best, we’ll look back on the Baltimore/Ferguson riots with nostalgia for the days when irrational violence was isolated. At worst, I don’t want to speculate, but the worst could come within a year, and it could be indescribably terrible.

The Myth of the Racist Cop
Four studies out this year show that if police are biased, it’s in favor of blacks.

By Heather Mac Donald
Oct. 23, 2016 6:17 p.m. ET

FBI Director James Comey has again defied the official White House line on policing and the Black Lives Matter movement. The “narrative that policing is biased and violent and unfair” is resulting in “more dead young black men,” Mr. Comey warned in an Oct. 16 address to the International Association of Chiefs of Police in San Diego. That narrative, he added, also “threatens the future of policing.”

Mr. Comey has spoken out before. In October 2015, after he observed that rising violent crime was likely the result of officers backing off proactive policing, President Obama obliquely accused the FBI director of “cherry-pick[ing] data” and “feed[ing] political agendas.”

But as much as Mr. Obama has tried to dismiss the violent crime increase that began after the 2014 fatal police shooting of Michael Brown in Ferguson, Mo., the data are clear.

Last year’s 12% increase in homicides reported to the FBI is the largest one-year homicide increase in nearly half a century. The primary victims have been black. An additional 900 black males were killed last year compared with the previous year, resulting in a homicide victimization rate that is now nine times greater for black males than for white males, according to a Guardian study. The brutality of these killings can be shocking. Over the weekend of Sept. 16, a 15-year-old boy in Chicago was burned alive in a dumpster.

More police are being killed this year too. Gun murders of police officers are up 47% nationally through Oct. 21, compared with the same period the previous year. In Chicago gun assaults on officers are up 100%. In New York City attacks on officers are up 23%. In the last two weeks, four California officers have been deliberately murdered.

No government agency is more dedicated to the proposition that black lives matter than the police. If the next administration continues to disregard that truth in favor of a false narrative about systemic law-enforcement racism, the next four years will see more urban violence and race riots, and more dead cops.

Ms. Mac Donald, a fellow at the Manhattan Institute, is the author of “The War on Cops” (Encounter Books, 2016).

http://www.wsj.com/articles/the-myth-of-the-racist-cop-1477261025

Darn, I should have called them to my town yesterday. I presided over a public retirement by fire of over 50 US flags. We thanked our troops, first responders, families of deployed soldiers and those whose work for our nation is done in secret and covert ways.

I mentioned that our nation has been tested by fire from the Revolution to Benghazi (yea, I went there. I even heard a couple approving “yea’s” from the audience)

I knew I should have checked in with the ACLU for permission.

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