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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. Annie,
    It’s a corrupt ‘system’ down there… 4 hours they left the body lay in the street for all to see. A message sent: This may be you next! Oh, the message was received…

    1. Max-1 – what is the average time a body is left at a crime scene? How do you know this was unusual? How do you know it was left to send a message?

  3. paulette92122, those we’re good points. deBoer’s peace was good, just weird when cocontrasted with his war thing. He needs to see that fortune cookie.

  6. Paul,

    I already told you what happened. Evidently, you choose not to believe the truth. There’s nothing I can do about that.

    1. Elaine – I do not wish to believe your ‘version’ of the story.

  7. Yes, Darren, lots of twaddle here today. I’ve contributed a bit of my own. Had a bit of time on my hands during research breaks.

  8. Paul,

    Who denied that Gene was once a guest blogger? That isn’t news. It’s not a secret. His Turley Blawg posts have not been deleted.

    1. Elaine – never said they were deleted. Said he moved on under pressure. When he was back for a short visit a couple of months ago he was complaining that the blog was not being run the way he thought it should. Sound like Gene?

  10. samantha

    For me, the salient points from deBoer’s opinion piece were these two sentences.

    “…But it also comes from the perception that, in the online forums where so much political discussion happens these days, the slightest misstep will result in character assassination and vicious condemnation.” and

    “…The culture is one of attack, rather than of education. And the claims, typically, are existential: not “this thing you said is problematic from the standpoint of race,” but rather “you’re a racist.””

    I saw a corresponding image that did not appear on Andrew Sullivan’s site. It was a hand holding a fortune cookie with the fortune which read: “The purpose of argument should not be victory, but progress.”

  11. paulette92122, the WaPo piece on Darren Wilson’s background is interesting.

    Freddie deBoer’s opinion at Andrew Sullivan is weird. In one breath he says “that social liberalism was once an alternative that enabled people to pursue whatever types of consensual personal behavior they wanted, and thus was a movement that increased individual freedom and happiness.”

    He acknowledges that that goal has been realized, however, he contiues, liberals today, using their PC hammers, are no better than Jerry Falwell’s Hell hammer was.

    Then he finishes by saying, “That is no way to build a broader coalition, which we desperately need if we’re going to win.”

    Liberals have already won. What does deBoer believe, that there is a war and there is lots left to do, like exterminating conservatives and opponents on the right?

  12. Mesp: “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”

    So what does that say about officer Wilson?

    Absolutely nothing.

    But who cares so long as the ratings go through the roof.

  13. hilarious to read so many comments from a few who have probably never so much as driven thru a inner city much less spoken to anyone with skin not their color. not one of them knows or understands the truth because they DON’T KNOW WHAT IT IS!! is there anyone who can actually explain why blacks are so hated? and DONT EVEN ATTEMPT THE CRIME BULLCHYT simply because stats are what the people who write them want them to be? the lawmakers, polietrickers and especially bigots. i guarantee not many of you even know what the new jim crow is? or the untold story. how many of you have sat and wondered how rosa parks a black woman got away with ignoring a white bus driver, riders and cops and was calmly walked taken to the precinct and then calmly let go without a scratch on her meanwhile many other blacks of that era were killed, maimed, raped and brutally beaten just on the thought that they eyed a white person? some of you especially the worse trouble maker on the forum doesnt even know his true history simply because again history is what a certain faction of uber shitters want it to be. i mean they do rule the roast right !!!

    isnt it amazing how once slavery was ended jim crow laws were set up and once those start falling the tables somehow turned to blacks being the most vicious, criminals in history. again BULLCHYT . the same few will yell and scream about how blacks sold other blacks into slavery before the white man another lie what they did was sell the trouble maker or enemy to a tribe on the other side of the island unlike so called christians they didnt rape, maim or kill one another. just got the individual out of their lives. they didnt sell the kids, or work them to death.
    a few will continue the lie that all blacks are on welfare when the truth is there are more whites then blacks on welfare always was welfare was set up for white people blacks were forced to pay their taxes into it but werent allowed to collect it. not until the 70’s coincidentally at the same time blacks began being arrested at three times the arrests of whites for the same exact crimes if they committed a crime at all. even today whites will commit a crime and the first thing they yell is a black man/woman did it!! but denial is the best medicine for those individuals because they have been conditioned to think that way and a life time of conditioning isnt going to be broken in a day. can i prove all i posted YES!! will i? NO!! why bother those same people would rather die living a lie then live knowing and accepting the truth……

    have any of you ever wondered why Abraham Lincoln one of the greatest Presidents we had is placed on a penny facing the opposite way of all the other lying pathetic so called free mason presidents? yea i would say no none of you did. nor did many of you question the lie of george washington as a 7-9 yr old depending on the story teller managed to chop down a big cherry tree and no one noticed until the tree was completely chopped down.

    can i answer that? again YES will i? NO it doesnt make a difference you need to believe in the lies to make yourself feel superior

    1. shakingmyhead – after your rant, I do want you to know I know the answer to the Rosa Parks question. I have lived in the inner city and taught inner city kids.

  15. I wish we could all just stick to the various issues and not get all carried away in the personalities and bantering. It’s starting to get old.

    So much time wasted on so much irrelevance.

  16. Elaine, an example of male privilege. Paul know what he knows so he’s right, never mind that you have first hand knowledge.

  19. Paul,

    I know the truth of the matter. Why would I accept your misrepresentation of what happened? I am letting others know what the truth is.

  20. John Oliver, I don’t accept “white privilege” and guilt as belonging together. White privilege is what IS. White privilege means that white people have privileges that are not available to others. Whites are the first to get jobs, the least likely to have the cops doing a stop and frisk, least likely to have the cops pull them over in a traffic stop when they’ve done nothing wrong. The lsit goes on. There is also a male privilege where men assume that they have certain privileges that aren’t available to women, where men disrespect women and have no idea that’s what they’re doing. It quite obvious that there are some on this list who prove that Privilege doesn’t recognize privilege. Those who have it just take it as a matter of course.

    1. Elainie – I also know the truth of the matter and was I right about a Gene being one of the ex-GBers?

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