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.
@Mark Esposito
You have a major factual error in your blog.
“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.”
Michael Brown was an 18 year old , 300 lb. man, not a 17 year old, under age kid.
Jim Rose
Ferguson’s booming white grievance industry: Fox News, Darren Wilson and friends
White defenders of officer Darren Wilson are raising money by slandering Mike Brown, with some help from Fox News
JOAN WALSH
8/25/14
http://www.salon.com/2014/08/25/ferguson’s_booming_white_grievance_industry_fox_news_darren_wilson_and_friends/
Excerpt:
Why, besides racism, are Wilson’s supporters so convinced of his innocence? Well, any good grift will involve a hoax or two, to gin up the sense of outrage. First there was “Josie,” a purported friend of Wilson’s who called in to a radio show helmed by gun-loving wingnut Dana Loesch to tell Wilson’s side of the story. “Josie” insisted that Brown attacked Wilson, grabbed his gun, and the terrified cop shot only in self-defense. The problem? The details were almost identical to those shared on a fake Facebook page set up to look like Wilson’s own. But before the tale could be debunked, not only Fox but CNN had reported on “Josie’s” tale with some credulity. As karoli notes over at Crooks and Liars, it’s not clear whether Loesch was punked, or was in on the punking.
Then we saw right-wing blogger Jim Hoft, named “the dumbest man on the Internet” by Media Matters, peddling a phony X-ray or CT scan purporting to show that Wilson suffered a fractured eye socket scuffling with Brown. Unfortunately, a little sleuthing revealed the image in question came from a facility at the University of Iowa and had nothing to do with the Ferguson case. Oops. Of course Fox ran with the story, but ABC News also reported that Wilson had suffered a “serious facial injury,” claiming its own local source.
Elaine – why, other than to play on white guilt, do people like yourself not wait until all the facts are out? If friends of Wilson want to defend him and march on his behalf, that is their right. People have rioted on behalf (actually excused by) the death of Michael Brown. One thing you can always depend on by liberals is a rush to judgment.
We know, from two eye-witness accounts that Michael Brown had his arms inside the car of Off. Wilson (in one version they are tussling, in the other version Brown is punching him), neither witness say the beginning of the incident. We know from the police that they took Wilson to the hospital for injuries to his face. So, we know that Brown was not an innocent bystander who got shot by a rogue cop. We know that Brown had been physically threatening to the QuikTrip manager minutes before this all took place. We know that Brown was jaywalking, which is illegal. We know from the asst prof at ASU, how jaywalking stops can go bad very quickly is the person stopped has an attitude problem.
bettykath, I know you want to hold on to the Ferguson Chief’s statement that Wilson didn’t know Brown met the description of the person who had just committed the robbery. However, you’re going to have to prove that Wilson did not hear the dispatch broadcast before that will get you anywhere. Regardless of what the Chief said. Police Officers learn to listen to dispatch calls. That’s the only way they can function.
Just like you’re trying to play that Wilson didn’t notify anybody until 12:43. -Why would he notify anyone after the second officer and the supervisor were on scene?
11:48 a.m. to noon – An officer responds to a call of a sick person.
11:51 a.m. – Another call comes in about a robbery at a convenience store. The dispatcher gives a description of the robber and says the suspect is walking toward the Quick Trip convenience store.
12:01 p.m. – The officer encounters Michael Brown and a friend as they walk down a street. Brown is shot to death as a result of the encounter.
12:04 p.m. – A second officer arrives on the scene followed by a supervisor one minute later. An ambulance responding to the earlier sick person call drives by and responds to assess Brown.
http://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation/2014/08/14/michael-brown-ferguson-missouri-timeline/14051827/
mespo, Could you be more incredibly naïve? If you punch a person in the head, you’re employing lethal force. If you punch a person with a gun in the head, you are employing lethal force which would then enable the assailant to get that gun.
You must think you’re still playing a child’s game on a playground.
Paul:
A man who pulls a gun in a fistfight is a coward and if he shoots, a criminal. It’s that simple.
mespo – the era of mutual combat has left us. If Michael Brown at 6’4″ and 290 pounds comes after me, I am both pulling a gun and firing repeatedly. And I am not aiming at his legs. Cops are not required to duke it out on the street, best man leaves. We arm cops for a reason and citizens are armed for a reason.
Assuming that at his size and weight, Michael Brown were coming after me, I would have no hesitation to shot to kill.
bettykath – two witnesses say they saw a tussle with Brown’s arms inside the cop car. One of them says that Brown was ‘punching’ Wilson in his original statement, he has back off of that. So, something was going on with Brown and Wilson at the cop car with Brown’s arms inside the car, maybe punching Wilson. Even a minor tussle is considered assaulting a police officer, which is a felony in most states. If, and I do say if, Brown hit him in the face hard enough for an orbital blowout, then it rises to deadly force.
In each of these cases it comes to a felony. So the felony of assaulting a police officer and fleeing the scene of a crime are both in play by the time Wilson gets out of his car.
Jack, Since when is jaywalking a felony? That’s the only crime in play at the time Wilson killed Michael.
@Jack
Great link to the Branca article!!!
Squeeky Fromm
Girl Reporter
Paul,
Some people can’t handle the truth. They choose to believe what they want to be the truth. So it goes.
Elaine – perception is reality.
On a previous thread I had posted a Missouri Statute in which the plain reading of the statute would seem to indicate that Officer Wilson could have used lethal force against Brown simply because he was a fleeing felon. I had reservations about the constitutionality of such an application. I had requested that Professor Turley weigh in. (I doubt Professor Turley ever saw that request.)
Thankfully, Andrew Branca was kind enough to do so. I agree with his analysis.
http://legalinsurrection.com/2014/08/did-mo-law-allow-for-deadly-force-arrest-of-mike-brown/
In reading the first few paragraphs of this post I had to double check which website I was on. After reading them I was sure I had been redirected to HuffPo or MSNBC. I mean all the buzz words were there and all the rhetoric was almost literally shining in neon colors.
I’m by no means defending this police officer or his opinion. However, this author does an incredible disservice to his argument and even worse to Professor Turley’s blog. With his obvious bias and ‘late night college research’ monograph of far (pluto reaching) left preaching ideals, I’m certain most educated viewers stopped reading. This isn’t a balanced, or well thought out post. It is something you would expect from Al Sharpton, Jesse Jackson, or Hashim Nzinga (NBPP Leader).
I very much hope that Professor Turley will be more judicious in his choice of guest bloggers in the future. More of these kinds of posts will severely harm the credibility of Professor Turley. That, in my opinion, would be one of the greatest injustices in recent history.
RFB
John Oliver
This started under George HW Bush… It’s been a slow mission creep ever since.
Annie,
I haven’t suggested once that this problem is of this President’s creation. Your reflexive defense of HIS administration demonstrates how committed you are in getting to the root cause of the problem. How objective are you prepared to be? Wouldn’t it would be a breath of fresh air for you to openly stand on the side of the rule of law rather than underneath its thumb.
Darren
Thanks. I thought it might be the parent Tweet. Same as before.
I’ll go to the correct thread and cite source… Again, thanks for all you do.
https://twitter.com/davidsirota/statuses/502522423799861248
Max-1. It seems to again be a problem with twitter passing three URLs through. On the editor side it only shows one URL, the one that you posted, but it then gets caught up in the trap. Unfortunately I cannot edit it since it only shows the parent URL in the editor.
“No oppressed, people will fight, and endure, as our fathers did, without the promise of something better, than a mere change of masters.” Abraham Lincoln
http://constitution.hillsdale.edu/document.doc?id=216
This problem will not be solved in the city of Ferguson or the state of Missouri or New Mexico or any other state. This is a reflection of the lawlessness in government, from top to bottom.
John Oliver
Community Call To Action-Remove Police Chief Thomas Jackson
http://petitions.moveon.org/sign/community-call-to-action-2
Local Children React to Protests: State of Emergency – Ferguson, Missouri (Dispatch 4)
When abuses in law enforcement are isolated to a community then you need look no further than the law enforcement leadership in that community. When they are isolated to multiple communities with the same state then look at the law enforcement leadership of the state. When it is in multiple states then look at the law enforcement leadership for the nation.
When the federal government functions above the law then they set the climate for the states to do the same. If it’s not checked somewhere along the line then it will infect the local communities. Eventually this lawlessness will infect the people and then forget about it.
Two black officers, one white man w/knife…
Day after deadly shooting, officers find themselves in eerily similar situation
http://www.kmov.com/video/featured-videos/One-day-after-fatal-officer-involved-shooting-officers-found-themselves-in-eerily-similar-situation-272328611.html