About
125 to 150 protesters, largely police officers and their families
and friends, showed up at the town hall meeting in Franklin, New
Jersey tonight to demand the resignation of a Franklin councilmenan
who has been an outspoken critic of police abuse. Not in attendance
was the target of their ire, David Fanale, who instead attended the
city council meeting in Roxbury to complain about police there,
against whom he had filed an Internal Affairs (IA) complaint over
what he says was an illegal 2013 police stop.
When he felt that complaint hadn’t been treated fairly by the
Roxbury Police Department, Fanale turned to his personal Facebook
page to express his frustration, eventually posting an image of
Calvin peeing on the thin blue line. Someone shared the photo among
the law enforcement community, which proceeded to mobilize against
him. The local media
described the offending illustration (reproduced at right) as
Calvin “urinating on what’s become a symbol of police sacrifice.”
Yet for many people who have found themselves on the wrong side of
it, the thin blue line represents police corruption and police
complicity in corruption.
The local police union president, Nevin Mattessich, had no
problem using dead police officers and their families to get the
upper hand against Fanale, who as a councilman says he has not
shown police the deference they expect form elected officials.
“I’ve had widows who’ve lost their husbands who are officers in the
line of duty. I’ve had family members who’ve lost their sons and
daughters in the line of duty who’ve contacted me to express how
upset they were,” Mattesich told local TV station My 9, later
claiming Fanale’s oath involved promising to work with them.
“Mr. Fanale took an oath to be impartial, to be fair and to
technically work with us and try to make Franklin better. What he’s
done here is he’s gained a tremendous amount of unnecessary
attention and he’s actually taking away from the Borough of
Franklin,” he said.
Other cops chimed in too to explain why they
thought Fanale was wrong. One retired New York City police officer
involved in the effort to target
Fanale told the Star-Ledger “everyone has the right to free
speech, but there are limitations to it.” It’s doubtful he or many
other officers would choose to apply that standard in limiting the
things union bosses say. Given the monopoly on the legal use
of initiatory force police officers have, there’s a far stronger
case for limiting what union bosses can say about elected
officials, since it’s so easy for them to intimidate others, than
what elected officials can say about police officers.
While Fanale is an outspoken critic of police abuse who says
he’s commited to holding police accountably as a council man, his
votes so far have not been unusually anti-police. When the council
voted on a new patrol car for the Franklin Police Department,
Fanale says he voted for it. He did vote against funding a seatbelt
ticketing initiative. It’s hardly a record that threatens the gravy
train police officers have commandeered for themselves. “Their
belief is that no office holder, no elected official should oppose
the police,” says Fanale. He says the police union wants him and
another councilman removed from office because the two were “not
going to give them everything they want.” In fact pro-police
residents (largely retired cops) were pushing for Fanale’s removal
before the Calvin incident,
as early as March of this year, because of comments Fanale made
critical of police.
In an interview with Reason, Fanale said “a lot of stuff” was
going on with the Franklin Police Department and described two
incidents he’s focused on—in one a Franklin cop made a dangerous
U-Turn that led to a collision with a septuagenarian driver. Fanale
says the city refused to pay the driver’s $250 deductible from the
accident. In another, a Franklin cop ran into a pet store to save
some animals from a smoke-filled room. Fanale says the police union
called it an “inferno” but that there was no evidence of a fire.
Also unmentioned in the police union’s narrative of the hero cop is
that the cop now has a workers’ compensation claim from the
incident, which did not occur on duty or under orders.
Fanale says because of the attention focused on him by the law
enforcement community he’s seen death threats posted in online
comments, and even his home address.
Fanale ran for city council last year. He says the mayor,
multiple council members and even a state assemblywoman suggested
he run. He said he had the backing of the Republican party during
his run but was at the time already shifting toward a more
libertarian outlook on politics, driven by an interest in Ron
Paul’s 2012 campaign and subsequent involvement with the Campaign
for Liberty. He says he has no intention to resign. Some residents
say they want to recall him but by law that process can’t be
started until Fanale’s served a year in office. Fanale says he’s
learned that for cops, his freedom of speech ends “where their
feelings begin,” comparing police officers’ reaction to being
offended over the image he posted to what extremist jihadis do to
people and media outlets that publish image of Mohammed, which some
Muslims consider prohibited based on certain hadiths, or
recorded sayings of Mohammed.
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