Martin Gugino is not a provocateur, he’s a concerned citizen of a democracy

On June 5th a 75-year-old citizen of our nation, Martin Gugino, was pushed to the ground outside of Buffalo City Hall by members of the Police Department’s Emergency Response Team while peacefully protesting over the killing of George Floyd.

Here is the alarming antidemocratic tweet President Trump posted about the occurrence: “Buffalo protester shoved by Police could be an ANTIFA provocateur. 75-year old Martin Gugino was pushed away after appearing to scan police communications in order to black out the equipment. @OANN I watched, he fell harder than was pushed. Was aiming scanner. Could be a set up?”

It is beyond frightening to think that the President, who makes decisions on a daily basis that affect the well-being of the

American people, would float a conspiracy theory, without a scintilla of evidence to support it. Make no mistake about it Donald Trump is a delusional demagogue who has become increasingly unhinged and will do anything to get re-elected.

It is obvious from the tweet that President Trump has no concern about the truth. He is heartless and does not possess a modicum of empathy. How else can you explain the tone of his tweet after watching the video which clearly shows Mr. Gugino approaching a group of police officers, waving his cell, being pushed backward, hitting his head on the ground and blood spurting from his ear, as rows of Buffalo police officers walk around him as he lies on the ground?

Mr. Gugino is still hospitalized in serious condition with a fractured skull. The Erie County District of Attorney, John J. Flynn, in whose jurisdiction the case falls, has indicated that he feels the officers violated the law and will be prosecuted. According to a New York Times article by Maria Cramer, “Under New York law, a person who attacks someone 65 or older and is more than 10 years younger than the victim can be charged with felony assault. Mr. Flynn said. If convicted, the officers face up to seven years in prison.”

The aim of President’s conspiracy tweet is to twofold to spread misinformation and mischaracterize Mr. Gugino as some kind of homegrown domestic terrorist and to shore-up his “law and order” credentials by shamelessly supporting law enforcement officers regardless of the actions they take.

As was the case with the three police officers who abetted, through their benign inaction, officer Derek Chauvin’s killing of George Floyd in Minneapolis, the various police officers in Buffalo who opt to walk around Mr. Gugino rather than to help him are almost as bad as the actual pusher and the superior officer who pulled an officer away from Gugino when he attempts to help him.

Almost as appalling was the mass resignation by the 57 members of the Police Department’s Emergency Response Team from the tactical unit in response to the Department’s suspension of two officers without pay pending an investigation by the District Attorney? The boilerplate statement by the head of the Buffalo Police Benevolent Association, John Evans, that the PBA stands, “behind those officers a 100% and that the union would pay for any defense cost for the two officers” was expected and it foreshadows the difficult road that any attempt to weed out bad apples in police departments will face. Evans was also quoted as saying that the charges were “totally unwarranted.” New York Governor Andrew Cuomo condemned the police who injured Gugino and then said “you just walk by the person when you see blood coming from his head? What we saw was horrendous and disgusting, and I believe, illegal…. It’s just fundamentally offensive and frightening. …How did we get to this place?” One of the reasons we got to this place is because of the overprotectiveness of many police unions and the secrecy that pervades the police culture. The “blue wall of silence” requires cops to be quiet about other officers’ misconduct. Strong leadership and accountability are needed to pierce the “blue wall” and bring about transformational reform needed to put in place systems that identify problem officers and intervene if there are early warning signs of trouble.

Another possible way to increase accountability is by making the records of police disciplinary action more transparent. A September 1, 2017 article by German Lopez in Vox entitled American policing is broken. Here’s how to fix it revealed that the manner in which police disciplinary records are handled varies among the 50 states and Washington,

DC. “23 states and DC make the records confidential. And 15 other states limit access to records by, for example, only letting the public see examples of severe discipline, such as suspension or termination. The remaining 12 states generally open police disciplinary records to the public.” New Jersey is one of the states that records are strictly confidential. Should we take another look at this?

I believe the majority of police officers do their job well, but I do believe there are bad apples that need to be removed. Good police officers should want the bad apples removed even more than I do.