All politicians issue public statements celebrating every possible holiday or observance and draw almost no attention. However, Gov. Tom Wolf’s proclamation on Juneteenth which has become a special holiday for state employees was a new low even for an extreme progressive like Wolf. Juneteenth is a day to commemorate the emancipation of the last enslaved people in the United States. It should be a day of unity.
A progressive like Wolf cannot just comment on the progress America has made to continually tweak our laws and mindsets to ensure equal rights and justice for all. However, in this year’s proclamation Wolf and his people went out of their way to defame police officers during National Police Week. Wolf’s proclamation said, “Juneteenth is a celebration of the progress we have made as a nation towards equality and justice for all. Sadly, the continued death of African Americans at the hands of police and rise in violent attacks against Asian Americans are painful reminders that racism and intolerance are still with us today.” If Wolf wanted to point out the murder of George Floyd as evidence of the need to root out mistreatment, I’m ok with that. But his statement is directed at police in general.
David Kennedy, president of the Pennsylvania State Troopers Association, responded by saying, “Let me be clear: Pennsylvania state troopers support the Juneteenth holiday. But for Governor Wolf to use his platform to further push a false narrative that police are racist murderers is nothing less than the worst kind of political pandering. It only serves to further divide our nation at the expense of officers who already work incredibly dangerous jobs.”
I would add two things. Wolf said in a Harrisburg TV interview stated he wasn’t trying to defame police; he was just stating a fact. Think about how casual this man is when making those incredible charges. The other observation is the almost total lack of coverage of this by the Philadelphia media.
So, I brought Abington Police Chief Patrick Molloy back on my show because has had experience with this casual slander of cops by a member of the Abington school board. At a January 21, 2020 meeting while discussing an updated policy on school resource officers, Dr. Tamar Klaiman said, “There’s a lot of evidence that anyone carrying a firearm in a district building puts kids at risk, particularly students of color.” She followed up this remark by saying, “Black and brown students are more likely to be shot by police officers, especially school resource officers, than other students. She later topped all of this off by saying, “Police officers shoot people pretty regularly.”
Klaiman is apparently a researcher at the Pennsylvania School of Medicine, yet she couldn’t provide any research to back up her casual attack on cops. Molloy was the chief speaker at a community meeting of over a thousand people outraged over Klaiman’s remarks. He told me last Friday that she was now done two ride alongs with police and has acknowledged her viewpoint on them has changed.
Molloy also told me critics of police like Wolf should do more to provide resources to help police do their jobs. We discussed the difficulty of Philadelphia police have enough operational vehicles due to vandals damaging them or setting them on fire. He said because so many people are being shot in Philadelphia, and since police usually transport bleeding victims to hospitals, their cars are disabled for deep cleaning.
The bottom line of all this is the narrative that police are constantly murdering unarmed African Americans must be constantly challenged. The media must also be challenged to do their job and challenge people like Wolf who insist on projecting these attacks on police, and then say that was not their intent. It is the intent of progressives like Wolf to diminish police. His recent Juneteenth proclamation is evidence of that.
