Monday, July 22, 2019

South Bend cops warn of ‘mass exodus,’ as morale tanks over Buttigieg handling of shooting

“To me, it’s like he kind of convicted Sgt. O’Neill before anything was even out, making comments like that,” one officer said. “It wasn’t based on the facts of what happened, because we don’t even have all the facts of what happened.”
Fox News  "As South Bend Mayor Pete Buttigieg commands national attention with his media-savvy presidential bid, the firestorm back home over an officer-involved shooting shows no sign of settling soon -- with the mayor facing criticism not only from protesters but police who say his handling has crushed morale and risks a “mass exodus” from the force.
“Morale around here has been terrible. We do nothing,” one police officer, a 20-year veteran of the force, told Fox News. “We call ourselves firemen, we sit around in parking lots until we’re called and then we go to the call, because if you say or do something wrong, then you get hung.”
“ 'At an all-time low,” another officer said of morale. “It’s been really demoralizing and hard to come to work lately.”
"Officers requested not to be identified for this story in fear of retaliation by the mayor's administration. But they told Fox News that they know of multiple officers who are considering handing in their badges or taking retirement if eligible, in response to the mayor’s handling of the shooting." . . .
. . . "Buttigieg has claimed he has not taken sides, but amid angry protests back home, he has not challenged the narrative that the shooting is connected to police racism. At an NBC News-hosted presidential primary debate last month, Buttigieg described the shooting as “a black man ...killed by a white officer” and said he “could walk through all of the steps we took, from bias training to de-escalation, but it didn’t save the life of Eric Logan. And when I look into his mother’s eyes, I have to face that fact and nothing that I say will bring him back.' ” . . .

Mayor Pete's virtue-signaling on race riles South Bend's police  . . . "Mayor Pete is caught between his police officers and the mobs that assume that a white policeman is racist if the victim is black.
"Mayor Pete should have supported the police chief and ordered him to conduct an internal investigation to determine what had happened.  Instead, Mayor Pete stabbed his police officers by jumping on the bandwagon that this is a civil rights issue.
"Yes, a white police officer killed a black man.  That does not mean that racism was part of the result.
"Unfortunately, so many Democrats are hostage to the narrative of race and let the mobs set the conversation."

I am not sure if this incident will hurt his presidential campaign.  What it does is prove that he is another Democrat who has to see everything in terms of race.

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