A cop is a cop. Val Demings, the woman that some endorsed for vice president, has found herself on the wrong side of the police brutality debate, reported Newsweek. In an interview on CBS’s Face The Nation, she explained that Officer Nicholas Reardon responded appropriately according to bodycam footage when he shot 16-year-old Ma’Khia Bryant. He shot the teen four times in the chest, killing her.
“Now everybody has the benefit of slowing the video down and freezing the perfect moment,” the congresswoman said.
“The officer on the street does not have that ability,” Demings continued.
From 1983 to 2011, Val Demings was a police officer. In her last four years of service on the force, she was the chief, and under her leadership, there was a 40 percent decrease in crime. While that may seem impressive, it only adds to her unknown history of defending police officers at their worst.
In 2010, the pig-turned-politician came under fire when a 26-year-old police officer under her purview manhandled an 84-year-old man so harshly that he broke the elderly citizen’s neck. The situation escalated when Daniel Daley, who was inebriated, made the aggressive move of grabbing Officer Travis Lamont by the shoulder.
Of course, the cop’s version was that the drunk and frail older man grabbed him by the throat with one hand and said he was going to knock him out with the other. That apparently merits a neck-snapping takedown.
Demings said of the incident, “I’m sure Officer Lamont saw his great-grandfather standing there.”
She further commented that the senior citizen should have been glad that he wasn’t arrested for battery on an officer when he initially touched Lamont on the shoulder. Demings also asserted that of all the tools that officers can use, the takedown used was the one designed to cause the least injury.
Okay.
A jury later awarded Daley $880,000 because they knew better.
Although Demings earned some street credit among the electorate when she was on Biden’s short list of vice-presidential candidates in the midst of the uprisings for George Floyd for her call-out of fellow officers, her record betrays that self-righteousness. In her final two years on the force, over 1,200 cases of officer use of excessive force, and 54% of the targets were Black. That number dropped in the years after she retired.
