Fraternal Order of Police National VP Gamaldi: LeBron Tweet ‘Incredibly Reckless and Dangerous’

Friday on FNC’s “Fox & Friends,” Fraternal Order of Police National Vice President Joe Gamaldi tore into Los Angeles Lakers star LeBron James over his now-deleted “YOU’RE NEXT” tweet in reaction to the Ma’Khia Bryant shooting in Columbus, OH. The post was accompanied by an image of the officer involved in the shooting.

According to Gamaldi, James’ tweet was “incredibly reckless and dangerous.” He said athletes “should stick to what they are good at,” but emphasized that if athletes or anybody else want to discuss political issues they should do their research.

“I mean, it was incredibly reckless and dangerous what he did,” Gamaldi asserted. “And frankly, athletes shouldn’t be weighing in on political issues. They should stick to what they are good at, which is playing sports. An Axios poll actually says a majority of Americans agree with me. But, you know what, this is America. And if they want to weigh in, fine. But you have a responsibility with a platform that size to do your research and to get it right. He tweeted that out to 50 million people. It was dangerous, it was reckless, and it’s no different than Joy Behar going on ‘The View’ the other day and saying that officers should be firing off warning shots, even though that’s prohibited by every agency and flies in the laws of physics because what goes up must come down. But you have people weighing in on issues who are not doing their research. They’re talking about we should be able to karate shop a knife out of the hand or round house kick it. This is ridiculous crap that is not grounded in facts.”

“[W]e are sitting on powder keg in this country, and they’re just willing to throw sparks on it,” he continued. “But the National Fraternal Order of Police is willing to sit down with anyone that is willing to have a fact-based discussion because we all want to work towards the same goal, which is reducing officer-involved shootings in this country. But until we acknowledge as a society that the other person involved in that incident with the officer has a tremendous responsibility on whether or not that officer uses force or not, we’re going to continue in this doomed cycle where we have a controversial incident, we yell at each other, and nothing gets solved. It’s real easy to tweet, but now it’s time to sit down and meet and discuss these issues.”

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