WATCH: Mo. Police Officer Delivers Hate-Filled Speech, Gets Suspended
He's
the same officer who tangled with out CNN anchor Don Lemon last week,
and Lemon brought to light the video of the cop's speech.
BY TRUDY RING
AUGUST 25 2014 4:49 PM ET
Out
CNN anchor Don Lemon helped bring to light video of a St. Louis County
police officer making a speech filled with homophobic, racist, and
sexist rhetoric, a revelation that has resulted in the officer’s
suspension.
Lemon was shoved by
the officer, Dan Page, while reporting last week from Ferguson, Mo., on
the protests that followed the fatal shooting of unarmed black man
Michael Brown in the St. Louis suburb. The video he brought to the
attention of Page’s supervisors was apparently made in 2012 and shows
him giving a speech to an organization called Oath Keepers of St. Louis
and St. Charles, the St. Louis Post-Dispatch reports. Oath Keepers’ website describes
it as a group made up of current and former military personnel, police,
and other first responders devoted to defending the U.S. Constitution.
In
the rambling, hour-long speech, Page calls gay people in the military
“sickening” and “pitiful,” rails against hate-crimes laws, and says four
of the U.S. Supreme Court’s justices are “homosexual sodomites.” He
calls President Obama “that illegal alien who claims to be our
president,” says Muslims “will kill you,” and advises women to relax
about “domestic violence stuff,” as couples who don’t get along should
“just shoot each other and get it over with.”
He
also warns Missouri’s U.S. senators, Claire McCaskill and Roy Blunt,
that he is “real good with a rifle,” and says that while he is a
Christian, he is nonetheless proud of being a killer. “I’ve killed a
lot,” says Page, a former Green Beret and 35-year veteran of the police
department. “And if I need to, I’ll kill a whole bunch more. … God did
not raise me to be a coward.”
“With
the comments on killing, that was obviously something that deeply
disturbed me immediately,” St. Louis County police chief Jon Belmar told
the Post-Dispatch, although he said, “No one believes he was
ever involved in a shooting or a fatal shooting.” Page’s biased
comments, he said, are also “beyond the scope of acceptable police
conduct.”
“Had
he been a probationary officer doing the same thing, I would have fired
him two hours ago,” Belmar added. An internal investigation into Page’s
conduct begins today, the chief said.
The liberal advocacy group Political Research Associates also
has found audio of Page being interviewed on radio shows hosted by
right-wing activists Rick Wiles and John Moore. Page warns that the U.S.
is in danger of being absorbed into a world government and claims that
the Department of Homeland Security’s definition of a terrorist “is a
Caucasian male 18-65, one who supports the Second Amendment, one who
believes in the second coming of Jesus Christ, one that is against
illegal immigration and is against homosexuality and has a definition of
traditional marriage.” He also says “99.9 percent” of sexual assault
accusations in the military are unfounded.
Watch video of Page’s Oath Keepers speech below.
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