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Wonder Why The Folks In Ferguson Are Up In Arms About Their Police? Meet Sgt. Major Dan Page, St. Louis Co. P.D.

By Mark Esposito, Weekend Contributor

Watching the waves roll in here in Duck, NC, I have to admit things seem pretty peaceful and serene. It got me wondering why the folks in Ferguson, Mo. are demonstrating on a daily basis about their policing. Wonderment stopped last evening when I came across this video by 35-year veteran of the St. Louis County Police Department, Sgt. Major Dan Page.  Former Green Beret and supervising cop, Dan’s vaguely known to most  CNN viewers as the enlightened peace officer who shoved reporter Don Lemon from a Ferguson street corner as he tried reporting on the mass protest of 17-year-old Michael Brown’s police-facilitated killing. Lemon was shoved and then was herded to some “Free Speech Zone” in a remote parking lot. Now street-savvy Page is back … and with a right-wing philosophy and blood thirsty vengeance that you’d have to go to 1970s Cambodia to match — “We can kill you anyway we want!”

Speaking before a group called the Oath Keepers who bill themselves as “a non-partisan association of current and formerly serving military, police, and first responders who pledge to fulfill the oath all military and police take to ‘defend the Constitution against all enemies, foreign and domestic,” (they sure look like a group of Doomsday Preppers to me), Page waxes eloquent and profane about all manner of right-wing blood boilers from his utter revulsion at the “Sodomites” on the United States Supreme Court ( four of ’em, you know) to those “weak” women in the military who are taking elite combat positions away from more qualified men to the race-based mess in Ferguson. By his own admission, Page “don’t trust nobody and I hate everybody. I hate y’all too I hate everybody. I’m into diversity. I kill everybody.”

What’ s even more remarkable is that his audience just loves him. This self-proclaimed group of “military, police and first responders” seems mesmerized by the rant which covers topics from the NDAA of 2012 explaining it’s just like the movie, Escape Plan, with Sly Stallone (That boat’s real. I know”) to domestic violence situations (“just shoot each other and get it over with”.)

 

Sarg also  tells us the word “gay” means happy and that’s it.  A pox on those sodomites. He doesn’t like lawyers. Not crazy about women. He reminds us that the President has no control as Commander in-Chief over the Marines or the Air Force since the U.S. Constitution doesn’t say so. (See, gotcha).  He calls the Marines the world’s finest fighting force but decries it’s “feminization” (as in allowing women to serve in combat roles) at the hands of Obama and it’s “log-head” commandant. Page even mixes in a little fire and brimstone jurisprudence reminding us that you can’t have the Constitution without the Bible and he stands at the podium thumping the Good Book. Page can’t resist that favorite of all right-wing circus acts that Obama is really an illegal alien from Kenya.  All in all it’s quite an audition tape for a pundit job on Fox News.

The video did serve to answer my question about all the fuss in Ferguson, but curiously left unanswered  why the whole audience of people Missourians hire to protect all of them didn’t walk out en masse. Maybe they agree is one chilling answer. After all, Page did get a snazzy Oath Keepers patch for his trouble to the vigorous applause of the audience.

My advice to the folks in Ferguson is that if this guy is a core sampling of the prevailing attitude of the public servants in St. Louis County …  well, since we’re talking movies here, remember that classic horror flick, When a Stranger Calls?:

 Jill, Jill. We traced the call! It’s coming from inside the house! Do you hear me? It’s coming from inside the house! You need to get out! Jill?

If you’ve got the stomach, here’s the video and a play-by-play from Crooks and Liars:

1:07: Talks about all men being created equal then went on to say “That does not mean affirmative action”.
1:26: Rants about hate crime laws
3:22: Black (little?) Perverts [ed. note: I think he said “black robed perverts” but the other way ’round wouldn’t surprise me]
5:25: Talks about doing a fair share of killing
15:40: Calls supreme court justice a homosexual sodomite.
18:30 “If I die I go to heaven… I died a long time ago”
20:30: Talks about St. Louis County schools
26:40: Calls President Obama an illegal alien
27:00: We can kill you anyway we want
31:38: Goes on anti-muslim rant
37:00: Talks about being a Saint Louis County Cop
43:00: Talk about killing people again
46:41: Goes on rant over being briefed about the 9/11 attacks on Aug 1st 1999 then says 9/11 happened 30 days later also talks about no weapons of mass destruction being found in Afghanistan.
49:22: Continues rant about having secret clearance at Fort (Leavenworth?) and training with Russian spetsnaz
52:40: Says people involved in domestic violence should “just shoot each other and get it over with”.
53:15: Somebody like me is going to come in and kill you
56:20: I don’t trust nobody and I hate everybody. I hate y’all too I hate everybody. I’m into diversity. I kill everybody.
58:02: Audience member: So what happens when good men like you are retiring from the military. What kind of military do we have left then?
58:15: Sodomites and females. End of statement.
1:01:00: Rants about female green beret
1:03:00 He’s handed an oathkeeper patch

 

Epilogue:

St. Louis County Police Chief  Jon Belmar, who immediately defended the shooting of  Michael Brown by Ferguson Police Officer Darren Wilson,   issued the following statement about Page via Twitter:

Some of you may have already seen the video of the St. Louis County Police Officer speaking off-duty at an Oath Keepers event. If you haven’t we are sure you will in the coming days as news circulates the release of the video.

Chief Jon Belmar was notified of this video’s existence today and upon a abbreviated viewing of the video was disturbed by the conversation being had. Chief Belmar does not expect this kind of rhetoric from his officers, just like they don’t expect it from him.

Chief Belmar, on behalf of the St. Louis County Police Department, would like to apologize to the community, anyone that video has or will effect, and to the other hard working officers on the detail with the officer in question because they deserve better than that. While the officer has never been involved in an officer involved shooting, the statements made about killing are unacceptable and not what we are about as a Department.

We hold our officers to a high standard of honor both on and off duty. While we as a department do not have an issue with officers expressing themselves, this was disturbing and unacceptable. The officer is a 35 year veteran of this department and has been deployed numerous times in military service. He had passed the evaluations upon returning from deployment and there was no indication of this attitude.

Chief Belmar would again like to apologize to anyone this video has offended and ask any videos of this nature be reported so we can take proper action against any officer not meeting our standards.

Being from Missouri, Belmar should have no problem with  my skepticism:  Show Me.

~Mark Esposito, Weekend Contributor

By the way and for better or worse, the views expressed in this posting are the author’s alone and not necessarily those of the blog, the host, or other weekend bloggers. As an open forum, weekend bloggers post independently without pre-approval or review. Content and any displays of art are solely the author’s decision and responsibility. No infringement of intellectual property rights is intended and will be remedied upon notice from the owner. Fair use is however asserted for such inclusions of quotes, excerpts, photos, art, and the like.

 

613 thoughts on “Wonder Why The Folks In Ferguson Are Up In Arms About Their Police? Meet Sgt. Major Dan Page, St. Louis Co. P.D.”

  1. After reading ALL of the above comments, I have only one thing to say to fellow bloggers here: Hands Up! Don’t Shoot!

  2. Actually, the military is sworn to defend the Constitution of the US from all enemies, both foreign and domestic. Military courts martial have clearly defined that following an unlawful order is no defense. If it is unlawful, soldiers are forbidden to follow it.

    Why the distinction?

    To prevent a President from seizing the military and becoming a tyrant. To prevent soldiers from following unlawful orders, for instance to slaughter innocent civilians. If they run amuck, they face a court martial, and following orders is no defense. So when a President repeatedly defies the constitution, this creates an ethical problem for the military. If he tries to extend an unconstitutional order that pertains to them, they cannot, by law, follow it.

    I enjoy Professor Turley’s posts, as they typically contain a fair, and balanced, view of current events and the law. He is Liberal, but does not view right and wrong through political glasses. Wrong is wrong no matter the party.

    But I have found that mespo’s weekend posts invariably amount to conservative-bashing. Here he’s found a cop unfit for duty (and they are out there) and proclaimed that HE is why they’re rioting in another city, and it’s the conservative’s fault (“Page waxes eloquent and profane about all manner of right-wing blood boilers from his utter revulsion at the “Sodomites” on the United States Supreme Court ( four of ‘em, you know) to those “weak” women in the military who are taking elite combat positions away from more qualified men to the race-based mess in Ferguson.”)

    Lowering the standards for the military, police, and fire departments to reach quotas of women has been an oft-examined scandal in those circles. Women should have equal access, not have the bar lowered. I’ve heard bitter complaints from firemen and cops about physical fitness tests made extremely easy just to get some girls to be able to pass. But then they can’t physically carry a full grown man out of a burning building, and endanger lives.

    But other than that, this guy sounds unfit for duty.

    This cop has already been (rightly) yanked off duty, an appropriate response. But he’s made this cop a representative of the GOP.

    You know why there’s an antagonistic relationship between cops and the city of Ferguson? Because poor neighborhoods tend to have higher rates of crime, and a population with a higher than average number of criminals will have a lower-than-average view of the police. Throw in some Jesse Jacksons claiming that people have zero responsibility for their lives, they’re just helpless victims, and every single time a cop shoots a black man it’s obviously racism, and you have a recipe for disaster.

    I honestly don’t enjoy the rants on the weekend blogs, and don’t think I’ll be reading any more from this contributor.

    1. indio007 – the lower the court, the less justice you get. It is a fact of life. It has nothing to do with corruption, it happens all over.

  5. Squeeky
    You’ll appreciate this story… speaking of troll bait.

    GoFundMe Shuts Down Comments on Darren Wilson Support Page
    http://gawker.com/gofundme-shuts-down-comments-on-darren-wilson-support-p-1625555938

    Pressure has been mounting on GoFundMe to address Wilson’s page, and the comments had clearly become a problem, partly because they were starting to be obviously trolled. The primary source of the trolling appears to be 4chan, whose users were leaving comments in the names of Twitter users speaking out against the page, as well as people like Hitler and Elliot Rodger.
    (continued)

  7. G. Mason,
    I’m fairly new to this blog and my sense is that this blog was largely populated with contributors that shared the same ideology. They probably felt entitled to “their” blog and they became complacent in what matters most; the rule of law. All of a sudden JT is attracting people with a different ideology and articulate enough to challenge their world view.

    I have stated before and I’ll repeat; I expect reason and logic to be fundamental qualities among people in any blog, but especially this one. Unfortunately, this blog suffers the same as any other and then JT steps in to rectify the typical reaction some have when facts don’t support beliefs. I’ll continue to participate as long as the host allows and as long as I can contribute and learn. I look forward to contrary viewpoints and I’m prepared to accept facts; I will use reason and logic and I will adjust my beliefs accordingly. Choosing to do anything less than that is just willful ignorance.

  8. Thanks, Elaine, Max.

    To whomever questioned by math, I’ve been working my math through the core. 🙂

  9. Squeeky Fromm, Girl Reporter
    Oh, I just had a comment eaten. It was a funny one, I think.
    = = =
    Ditto…

  12. Squeeky
    Work from home. Door locked.
    If people can’t knock, they deserve a good eye full. IMO

  15. The quality of the weekend bloggers has sadly deteriorated the last year or so as it drifts from interesting views on law to outright partisan based attacks or propaganda.

    As Mr Turley has grown in popularity and recognition there have been more right leaning or Libertarian people of either side coming here. I get the sense of some resentment for it from the left leaning older posters. I have to wonder if this is a reflection of that discontent.

    Regardless, it is disappointing.

  16. Annie
    You know that sign isn’t PC…
    … Tranny is a derogatory slur.

    I’m sure the intended audience would appreciate that.

    1. squeeky and max – I do keep the doors locked but keep clothes handy. It is Arizona, don’t ya know.

    1. John Oliver – that is a thoughtful and excellent letter the Oath Keepers sent to Gov. Nixon. I doubt he will listen to you, but at least you tried to make sense.

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