This weekend, citizens from across the state gathered at Nashville’s Legislative Plaza Sunday to support law enforcement, but not without sparring verbally with left-wing protestors — the same protestors who have occupied that space for weeks.
Pro-police demonstrators formally called their event “The Back the Badge Rally.”
Left-wing protestors shouted profanities against both the police and U.S. President Donald Trump.
But folks on the other side of the plaza held signs saying how much they supported police. They waved American flags. They sang “Bad Boys,” the theme to the television show COPS. They asked drivers passing by to wave if they too appreciated law enforcement.
And, unlike the people on the opposite end of the plaza, none of the pro-police demonstrators announced they were permanently occupying the property.
Nor would they rename it.
Tennessee Highway Patrol officers, who have jurisdiction over Legislative Plaza, arrested people.
“The preliminary information that I have is that, yes, 38 protest individuals were arrested and or cited,” said THP spokesman Bill Miller in an email to The Tennessee Star.
“They were all from the protest group, not from the Back the Badge group.”
Miller did not provide additional details about the people that THP officers arrested.
According to a Facebook description of the event, organizers “want to stand with our amazing law enforcement and public servants so that we can find solutions to the important issues facing our State TOGETHER.”
https://www.facebook.com/photo.php?fbid=10221610625831703&set=pcb.280292243385011&type=3&theater
As The Star reported last week, Back the Badge organizer Chase Matheson described his motivation. As a son of a former police officer, Matheson said he felt it was important that law enforcement know they have the community’s support.
“After seeing what happened in Atlanta and worrying about a friend of mine that lives very close to where some of the blue flu is going around. I was speaking to my dad who was an officer in England many lifetimes ago. And after the riots in 1981, he said he didn’t sign up for that. And he quit the police force after a couple of years,” Matheson said.
“He had been in the police force for a couple of years and [after] having a flaming couch thrown off a high rise at him and some of his fellow officers he decided he was going to look for a different career. He moved halfway around the world and came to America. So, I already knew from a few years ago when I lived in downtown how short we were on officers.”
Matheson also said he remembered calling the police once for a fraud charge at a cash loan company where he once worked.
“It took about three hours for an officer to show up. So Nashville is not in the position to lose any more officers. And I know after having watched the news for the past month that it would be hard to get any decent people to sign up to be an officer right now.”
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Chris Butler is an investigative journalist at The Tennessee Star. Follow Chris on Facebook. Email tips to [email protected].
Photo “Back the Badge Rally” by Kristin Benton.
Why are there bad cops? Because there aren’t enough good people willing to put up with the crappy hours, dangerous conditions, and low wages to fill all the needed vacancies. Fund the police. Do it with criminal penalties. Make sure crime doesn’t pay.
One reporter, Levi Ismail, said there were multiple of the arrested protesters allegedly from out of State. I asked if he knew how many, he said he didnt but would report more as booking information came available. Guess what? ZERO follow up by ANY local News
BLMs and their Islamic friends assaulted Catholics in St. Louis, there are pictures and video but the “mainstream” news isn’t much interested. It’s instructive to compare what news accounts there are
https://www.stltoday.com/news/local/crime-and-courts/circuit-attorneys-office-says-blows-thrown-at-protest-of-st-louis-statue-are-under-investigation/article_1c78a608-aa85-55c9-bffb-7e1ac19a62c3.html
https://www.lawenforcementtoday.com/blm-protesters-assault-christians-demonstrating-at-statue-of-king-louis-ix-in-st-louis/
links at the bottom of the latter link are more evidence of how selective enforcement of the law is the “new normal”
MrTea writes, “BLM and their Islamic friends…” Well now, that makes sense. Those who started and lead BLM are admitted Marxists and Comminists, who, along with radical Islam, are two of the most murderous groups in history in imposing their slavery and tyranny on others. It is fitting that they are allies as admitted here:
Ilich Ramirez Sanchez — aka Carlos the Jackal — communist convert to Islam, in his 2003 book, “Revolutionary Islam” called on “all revolutionaries, including those of the left, even atheists,” to accept the leadership of Islamists:
“Only a coalition of Marxists and Islamists can destroy the United States.”
Those arrested…“They were all from the protest group, not from the Back the Badge group.”
That about sums up this whole issue. The Left’s day of reckoning us fast approaching…..I can hardly wait.
Is this a threat of violence? Why don’t you share your your knowledge with law enforcement?
If you are so concerned about violence you only have to look at the commies, BLM protestors, and the soy boy gun totin’ antifa idiots. You leftists condone and support violence when it fits you communist narrative, but when you get push back it’s “we didn’t do anything and they threatened us with a gun”. all of you Marxist, liberal, democrats are the greatest threat this nation has faced in my lifetime. Law and order will prevail.
….you couldn’t tell the difference between BLM protestors and Uber drivers.
…you borrowed your daddy’s Escalade (and white privilege) to drive around the plaza showing how “woke” you are.