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.
Rafflaw,
“[W]ouldn’t someone in authority have stepped in to remove the body sooner than 4 hours?
Not necessarily.
As CNN reported via Julie Melinek, MD;
Why does a death scene investigation take so long? An outdoor death scene is a messy and complicated place. As soon as the person has been declared dead, the area has to be frozen in time to ensure that we, the public, can later learn what really happened there.
Crime scene photographers and trained evidence collection analysts have to “process the scene,” an hourslong procedure when done properly. The body, the position of any vehicles, the lighting, the height of adjacent structures –everything needs to be photographed from multiple angles.
http://www.cnn.com/2014/08/20/opinion/melinek-michael-brown-autopsy/
rafflaw; “Shouldn’t someone in authority have actually stopped these officers from abusing protestors and reporters after the first night, or the second night?”
Perhaps you should recognize that unlike members of your profession, these guys don’t get to simply file an Amended Motion. They have to react on the fly. They have little to no experience in dealing with protests and the subsequent violence. They don’t have the luxury of playing armchair quarterback. The dynamics involved kept changing.
Maybe you wouldn’t wonder why so much if you ever walked the walk instead of only talking the talk.
Ross,
Your post wasn’t censored. I found it in the spam filter.
Jill, “The autopsy supports a strong case for murder.”
Have you seen the complete autopsy, Jill? I’ll go ahead and answer for you. The answer is NO. You have only seen a portion of a secondary autopsy. A secondary autopsy performed without the information of the original autopsy is unreliable at best, and in this case likely to be skewed in favor of the party who hired the pathologist. Dr. Case performed the original autopsy. She does not work for any of the parties. She reports to the Department of Health.
To draw a conclusion based on incomplete information is to do so based on acknowledged ignorance. I would think you are smarter than that.
Jack,
Anyone watching the actions of the police in Ferguson the last several days can tell that Dan Page is not the exception. If he was the exception, wouldn’t someone in authority have stepped in to remove the body sooner than 4 hours? Shouldn’t someone in authority have actually stopped these officers from abusing protestors and reporters after the first night, or the second night?
Ross
Without explanation my last post was censored. It was fact based and offended nobody.
====================
WordMess does that to everyone from time to time.
Without explanation my last post was censored. It was fact based and offended nobody.
Jill
The entire police response in Ferguson was foul. When did it become illegal to protest in one spot? When did it become illegal to be upset when a young man is killed by the police and they leave his body in the street for 4 hours? Is there a message being sent here? There was an obvious message being sent by the officers that roughed up the press and arrested the press, wasn’t there? When did it become illegal to bleed on an officer when they are beating you? Institutional racism is a threat to us all whether it is in Ferguson Missouri or Chicago or anywhere. Do you agree that institutional racism is at the core of the problems in Ferguson?
Jane:
The investigative journalism organization “Mother Jones” (www.MotherJones.com) did some great writing on Ferguson’s history and racism is a big part of it.
In the 1940’s suburbs of St. Louis were passing covenants designed to prevent African-Americans from moving to most suburbs. Ferguson was one of the few suburbs that didn’t have a covenant to discriminate .These discriminatory covenants were later ruled unconstitutional by the U.S. Supreme Court so the racists passed new laws essentially banning apartments and minimum lot sizes, etc. which is done in many other parts of the nation today to achieve the same goal.
mespo – isn’t subhuman what slave owners thought about blacks? Isn’t subhuman what Nazis thought about Jews and gays? Isn’t subhuman what abortionist think about fetuses?
I have to wonder why two weeks after the shooting Michael Brown’s age is not known by Mr. Esposito? (I suppose this is just Charlton Stanley redux.)
This is just partisan politics propaganda all over again. Esposito seems to have found the exception and labeled it the rule. I have no doubt that Esposito would be the first to call foul if the same was done with some of the more undesirable citizens of Ferguson.
Dan Page is clearly the exception. Anyone who doesn’t know that doesn’t know many police officers from the St. Louis area.
Squeeky,
I want to start by stating something I really believe in–every person is entitled to a fair, civilian trial. That includes any cop involved in any action in Ferguson. However, I can’t agree that there is no reason to suspect foul play. The autopsy supports a strong case for murder.
On the other hand I agree with you when you say that many people have found a bogeyman. The idea that what is going on in Ferguson is the result of a right wing Oath Keeper is comforting to self identified leftists. As long as violence can safely be put into the box of a right wing person, they are O.K. with looking the other way, ignoring the entire picture at will. It ends the story for them. Honestly, I find this scary.
What this man (and by extension his audience) believes is offensive, hateful and cruel. However, I do not draw the conclusion from this that everything happening in Ferguson is explained away by pointing to the right wing. That is the “bad apple” fallacy and is intellectually dishonest. It is also propaganda aimed at leftists and obviously, effective.
Great issue Mark. I am always amazed at the use of the Constitution by groups such as the Oath Keepers, but they seem to forget that even the so-called Sodomites have the same rights under that document. Or at least they are supposed to. Until you prosecute police crimes consistently, the abuses will continue. Do the Ted Nugent’s and the Dan Page’s of the world think that the Sodomites and the minorities have the same right to take up arms?
Thank you, Anon. What has been revealed in Ferguson is not an anomaly, it is a pervasive mindset in the military that has intruded into our nations civilian police force. I don’t think it rascism so much as a cultural attack on the poor and powerless in our society. The police are out of control in my town in Florida, (35,000) and if you check YouTube incidents of police violating our rights…they are a dime a dozen. Also, Matt Tabibi explains it pretty well in is latest book, THE DIVIDE: American Injustice in the Age of the Wealth Gap.
If you have not seen this on the streets and local courts of your own municipality and county, then you don’t get out enough, and are living in a bubble.
There should be an emergency order to require Missouri school children (next generation of cops and administrators) to watch Jane Elliott’s 1960’s “Brown Eyes Blue Eyes” educational video series.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VeK759FF84s
@nicks
You are right. The cultists have found a bogeyman. A nice right wing extremist type to blame the demonstrations on. But, there is no nexus, no proximate cause provided between the speech or the speaker ‘s attutude, and the demonstrations.
There is a lot of nexus and proximate cause between the Al Sharpton types and the demonstrations. My goodness, he is even carrying the act to NYC. The media also bears blame, but what the hey, another alleged Trayvon is good for the ratings! They can sell more stuff for the advertisers!
This story, about Page, looks more like an opportunity to vent than to enlighten.
Squeeky Fromm
Girl Reporter
Dredd,
Good idea! This may get worse. Old saying….stay ahead of the curve. Hope for the best. Plan for the worst.
Rick
When the final FBI report comes out and grand jury makes their decision, someone’s going to flip.
The grand jury consists of six white men, three white women, two black women and one black man. Nine votes are needed to indict.
===========================
JT commented on the Perry grand jury.
Perhaps he will do so on the Ferguson grand jury as well.
By the Grace of God Go Bigots. Quite often citing God, Jesus, the Holy Spirit, Amen. The deep rooted igPay mentality needs justification and therefore by the Grace of God they go. Mark: There is a Duck, NC and a place called Duck Creek, NC. If you are up Duck Creek you need a paddle. But, having lived in Saint Louis and lived in NC there is a large difference. Saint Louis is not a Southern City but more like Chicago, a Northern City. In the South the races get along better and are not as segregated. Segregated by church maybe but not soooo much by neighborhood. All the Whites in Ferguson did not flee and go west young man to St. Charles or Warrenton. Ferguson is better than some Chicago suburbs. Part of the White Flight phenomena has to do with the life hope and presumption to wish to own a new home in a new subdivision. The new subdivisions are in St. Charles and Warrenton. The couples who filled up Ferguson and blossomed Florissant in the 1950s were of that mode. The first home for young hubby and wifey poo had to be in a new subdivision. Near a Cat O Lic church. Yeah the Cat O Lics are more prone to the white flight thing, or the thing seen as white flight. Ferguson had a core of folks who lived there, or their grandpa and grandmas did, prior to the 1950s. They are in old Ferguson. Those that lived on Teston and Millman and further east towards Jennings were quick to go to St. Charles. The next generation to Warrenton. Now the young upstarts way out west have an inclination to migrate all the way to the inner city in neighborhoods like Soulard near downtown Saint Louis. What comes round goes round. I am just a dog. What do I know. I am black and I am proud. Labs rule.
Oh yes, I forgot to include homophobia as another hallmark of these Oath Keeper morons. To call four Justices sodomites, wow.
When the final FBI report comes out and grand jury makes their decision, someone’s going to flip.
The grand jury consists of six white men, three white women, two black women and one black man. Nine votes are needed to indict.