As reported by Counter Currentnews.com the Sheriff of Florida’s Palm Beach County is being called on the carpet for making incendiary remarks at a community meeting last month in Boynton Beach. It seems Bradshaw urged the attendees that they should use their vehicles as weapons against protesters – “violent thugs” in his parlance — who may be blocking their path.
Bradshaw’s statement was made in response to an elderly woman who voiced concerns about street protesters. He offered this as a “solution”:
Your safety is far more valuable than those violent thugs illegally blocking the roadways. If you see the protesters, and you can’t back up, stopping will make you an easy target for violence, robbery or murder. If you are driving on a Florida roadway, it is up to them to move. So, sit as low as possible in your car and accelerate forward. If you run over protesters, remember that your safety comes first and they shouldn’t have been there in the first place.
As to the legality and possible legal (criminal) liability of such a maneuver, Bradshaw sought to put the woman’s mind at rest:
“Whatever you do,”, he continued. “I can’t emphasize enough how important it is not to stop, and if they are injured, they brought it upon themselves.”
This means, of course, that Bradshaw and his fellow officers will look upon any “damage” done to protesters via vehicular assault as a matter of “self-defense,” thus relieving any driver of responsibility for the hurt, pain, or even deaths that this action may cause.
But Bradshaw wasn’t done yet. Maiming or killing innocent demonstrators, he argued, was not just an unavoidable necessity, but a veritable duty. How so? Why, you ask. Well…race.
These demonstrators are mostly black people, after all — “violent thugs” who “kill white people with hammers.”
To bring this last point home, Bradshaw dropped the “violent thugs” dog whistle altogether and just said it straight out:
With our limited budget, we just don’t have the manpower to be policing the community like we should be. You should be very concerned if you come across these protesters because they are very violent thugs and have even killed white people with hammers in other parts of the country. Now they are blocking the roads with their arms in barrels and we just don’t know what those barrels contain. For all we know, they could contain weapons to use when unsuspecting drivers get close. If you see these people, stop your vehicle as far as possible and back away before they can attack.
Sheriff Bradshaw seems to thrive in an ever-bubbling stew of racial conflict and controversy. He and his office have been defendants in over 40 racial discrimination lawsuits, one of which paid a plaintive a $1 million settlement.
And, as per Blackbluedog.com, Bradshaw not only brags about, but actually show pictures of a police dog ripping the testicles from an African American man.
And, if that isn’t enough, this particular sheriff and his henchmen are beinginvestigated by local television station WPTV for an alleged heavily racially freighted cover-up within his department. The investigation stems from an incident in which two black deputy sheriffs were killed by a white deputy who ran into them at 106 MPH. The allegation of a cover-up is based in the undisputed fact that Bradshaw summarily removed the original homicide detective from the case because he recommended that the white driver of the vehicle be charged with two counts of vehicular homicide. Bradshaw replaced that homicide detective with another who actually disagreed with those initial findings and declined to pursue the white officer.
Stay tuned for the results of this disturbing investigation.
Finally, Sheriff Bradshaw’s words and deeds have come to light hard on the heels of an earlier revelation that yet another Florida police agency has been routinely using photos of black men for target practice.
These attitudes by police, however, are by no means limited to the “great state of Florida.” It seems, you see, with each passing day, from Seattle to New York, from Cleveland to New Orleans, police and other “law enforcers” have eagerly embraced this new “open season” on black people.
Herbert Dyer, Jr. is a Chicago-based freelance writer. Herb may be reached at: [email protected]. Read other articles by Herb.
