Cleveland police behaving badly (again)
by digby
Talk about not getting it:
A Cleveland police union has demanded that the Cleveland Browns football team apologize for a player who wore a T-shirt before Sunday's game protesting the police shootings of two black people.
Browns wide receiver Andrew Hawkins wore a shirt reading "Justice for Tamir Rice And John Crawford III" during pre-game warmups. Rice, who was just 12 years old, died last month after a Cleveland police officer shot him when he mistook the boy's toy gun for a real weapon. Crawford, 22, was shot dead by police in August at an area Wal-Mart while he was holding an air rifle.
Cleveland Police Patrolman Union President Jeff Follmer sent local TV station WEWS a statement after Sunday's game that called for an apology from the NFL team.
"It's pretty pathetic when athletes think they know the law," the statement read, as quoted by WEWS. "They should stick to what they know best on the field. The Cleveland Police protect and serve the Browns stadium and the Browns organization owes us an apology."
The only right way to deal with this is to say nothing. This self-righteous defensiveness just exposes them as the kind of thin-skinned, unprofessional authorities with little regard for citizens' constitutional rights that has people up in arms in the first place. Failing to treat the police with the respect they believe they deserve is not against the law. At least not yet.
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