Black officer sues Black Lives Matter
Defendants accused of inciting attacks
About two months ago, Dallas Police sergeant and president of the Dallas Fallen Officer Foundation Demetrick Pennie garnered praise for helping to heal relations between police and the black community.
He was reacting, in part, to a post by an NFL star.
Following the slaying of five Dallas police officers that occurred after a particularly bloody week — police in other cities had killed two black men, Alton Sterling in Baton Rouge and Philando Castile in Falcon Heights, Minn. — Cleveland Browns running back Isaiah Crowell posted a disturbing illustration to Instagram.
In graphic detail, it depicted a uniformed white police officer, arms twisted behind his back. A man dressed in black, wearing a necklace with an ankh and a pair of American flag suspenders, stood behind the officer with one hand clamped on his mouth. The other hand holds a knife, which has just slit through the officer’s throat. Blood is shown gushing out from an open wound.
Its caption: “Mood: They give polices all types of weapons and they continuously choose to kill us.”
Crowell quickly removed the post, but not before the gears of the outrage machine began cranking. He apologized.
Amid the backlash, Sgt. Pennie, who is black, invited Crowell to attend the funeral of Patrick Zamarripa, one of the five slain Dallas police officers, and to spend the day with him and other police officers in an attempt to find similarities, not differences.
Crowell accepted the invitation.
Ultimately, the interaction seemed positive.
On Friday, however, Pennie took a step in a different direction.
With conservative gadfly lawyer and founder of FreedomWatch Larry Klayman, he filed an amended 66-page lawsuit in the United States District Court of the Northern District of Texas against Black Lives Matter, President Obama and others.
The suit, which is filed on behalf of the plaintiffs and “police officers and other law enforcement persons of all races and ethnicities including but not limited to Jews, Christians and Caucasians,” accuses the defendants of inciting “their supporters and others to engage in threats of and attacks to cause serious bodily injury or death upon police officers and other law enforcement persons of all races and ethnicities including but not limited to Jews, Christians and Caucasians.”
The phrase “including but not limited to Jews, Christians and Caucasians” appears 35 times in the suit.
The suit is unlikely to be taken too seriously by a judge. Among other things, Pennie does not show some specific harm he has suffered, a requirement for federal lawsuits. And then there’s the matter of the First Amendment and the president’s immunity from suits.