By TeleSur | – –
A dozen police officers face “benign” discipline after they appeared with Donald Trump while sporting his “Make America Great Again” caps in uniform.
More than a dozen San Antonio police officers in uniform wore U.S. Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump’s “Make America Great Again” hats during his stop in Texas Tuesday, which suggests that they support his racist, xenophobic and misogynistic ideas.
The officers are now facing disciplinary measures by the department for violating a policy against endorsing a candidate while on duty, the police chief said.
The officers in uniform wore the red caps with Trump’s slogan as they stood with the candidate at an airport, in a video posted on Trump’s Twitter page. The 25-second clip bears the words “We will make America safe & great again, together” as the officers walk away.
San Antonio Mayor Ivy Taylor later said on Facebook she was “deeply disappointed” by the display and Police Chief William McManus said in a statement the officers showed “poor judgment.”
“I expect them to know better than to give the appearance of endorsing a candidate while on duty and in uniform, regardless of the political campaign or the candidate,” McManus said.
However, Shaun King, a journalist for the New York Daily News and a Black Lives Matter activist, perhaps offered a more accurate interpretation of why the video was disturbing.
“Don’t worry though. These officers are fair and impartial,” he said in a post on Facebook in which he sarcastically questioned their fitness to serve while sharing Trump’s ideas about Black people, Latinos and Muslims.
The officers were escorting Trump at the end of his visit, said Michael Helle, president of the San Antonio Police Officers Association, in a statement.
“Frankly, the officers were most likely caught up in the moment and did not consider the political nature of their actions,” Helle said.
Helle told the San Antonio Express-News he expected the officers to only face “benign” punishment, such as a written reprimand.
Last month, the Fraternal Order of Police, the largest U.S. organization of its kind, endorsed Trump. The group’s president said at the time his members believed the Republican nominee would “make America safe again.”
Also earlier this month the Cleveland police union endorsed Trump, a move that Black Lives Matter activists in the city protested and called a slap in the face to efforts against police brutality and killings of oppressed minorities in the United States.
Trump has described himself as the “law-and-order” candidate at a time when law enforcement has become a major focus of public discussion in the United States.
In the last two years, the country has seen a number of major protests against the deaths of Black men in encounters with police, which has sparked a debate over police use of force and the role of racial bias in the criminal justice system.
Via TeleSur
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Related video added by Juan Cole:
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