Alex Teach Image
There is an advantage to cops pretty-much hating me and “activists” full-on hating me: The freedom to say W.T.F. I want. Which is, of course, among the primary reasons I’m hated. And it is here I begin this column about the recent re-uproar over the reinstatement of Officers Emmer and Cooley to the Chattanooga Police Department despite the tremendous divide between the video which fostered the uproar, and the process of due rights that’s led them to being reinstated with full pay.
On one side, you have the inimical “Concerned Citizens for Justice” or CCJ, who have given a public statement that first praises the mayor and police chief of Chattanooga for their mutual stances against the decision of the administrative judge that decided for the plaintiffs here, then essentially bashes them “just in case they don’t order an immediate appeal” despite the possibility that it could be a gigundus waste of time since the local grand jury of citizen peers, the FBI, the D.A.’s office, and now an administrative law judge say there’s nothing to prosecute and/or fire them for.
Per their statement, they feel they can make Chattanooga “the next Sanford, Florida” despite a lack of death, and a high concentration of the use of cocaine and cutlery on the part of the felonious halfway house-bound victim who was trying to beat his way through the door of the halfway house to access its civilian overseers and make them “understand something,” presumably, with his edged teaching aid. (Making him a victim, of course.)
These are also the folks that hang banners off of downtown bridges inciting racial violence in the name of…well, I’m not sure, but something important to people that incite violence based on cartoon-like statistics compiled by convicted hijackers now re-branded as “anarchist heroes,” but that’s their “thing.” I “get it.” I would do as well getting frustrated by a brain-damaged Yorkshire terrier, but the Yorkie is neither able to grab headlines like these cats nor does it do so while closely resembling an equally-deranged cartoon character like “Sideshow Bob” on “The Simpsons.” This is pure media gold, and I love journalistic jewelry.
Next to them, however, is a segment of society that agrees on principle and also wishes to act in the name of “justice” so long as “justice” ironically doesn’t involve a local grand jury of citizen peers, the FBI, the D.A.’s office, and now an administrative law judge.
Chief among these is City Councilman Larry Grohn who stated, “The Thin Blue Line must stop protecting the very small number of officers who give all the rest a bad name.”
While I agree with his statement in general, I’m not sure exactly how this applies, because the one sworn officer involved in the decision-making process (Police Chief B.H. Dodd) is the one that fired these officers after reviewing the video gathered in evidence by other officers in Internal Affairs. The grand jury isn’t part of the Thin Blue Line. The judge sure as hell isn’t…and the D.A.’s office that prosecutes our officers isn’t either, so…what is he talking about? Cops are “the Thin Blue Line” and cops are the ones that fired them.
And where does that leave me? With the NAACP making the most cogent and sensible response to an awkward-to-terrible situation. How the hell did that happen?
Comb through my words and you’ll find that I don’t have an opinion one way or the other about the actual reinstatement. Questioning the common findings of the FBI, the district attorney, a grand jury, and now a judge is something I haven’t done before and I’m not compelled to start doing now, video or no video, especially when the judge in question lays blame at the feet of the one that ingested cocaine, armed himself, forced the call to 911 and resisted as much as he was struck by a baton. But the response? Wow.
Classic Sideshow Bob—and classic distraction from any semblance of dealing with the actual causes of the events in question.
Responding by gathering en masse to voice protest at the one body that actually agrees with them (the city council, as opposed to the Hamilton County D.A.’s office, the FBI or the judiciary)?
Classic CCJ.
Don’t go changing, folks. It’s not easy to come up with writing material as rich and consistently baffling as yours.
No…really.