After a video emerged of a Broward County, Florida, police officer slamming a black teenager’s head into the ground, and then punching him. Golden State Warriors Steve Kerr seemed to blame the entire country for the incident.
“What the hell is wrong with our country? This is insane yet routine. So demoralizing.” tweeted Kerr on April 20.
What the hell is wrong with our country? This is insane yet routine. So demoralizing. https://t.co/bXxFoKrXY9
— Steve Kerr (@SteveKerr) April 20, 2019
Officer Christopher Krickovich, seen in the video, has been placed on “restricted administrative assignment” and was ordered to surrender his gun and badge while the incident is investigated. Krickovich and other officers were responding to a fight in Tamarac, FL.
Los Angeles Lakers forward LeBron James responded to Kerr on Twitter by tweeting, “So wrong!! Hurts me to my soul!! To think that could be my sons. Scary times man.”
Some of Kerr’s Twitter followers seemed to take issue with him making this into a national problem.
@TBane25 tweeted at Kerr and NFL Network’s Mike Silver: “It is brutality. No question. But it’s the exception not the rule. No question. Most cops aren’t like this. It’s intellectually unjust and misleading to label this act as commonplace in the USA.”
@PNWhusker tweeted at Kerr: “I agree. It’s awful but it’s those two or three idiots that did that is the issue. It’s not the whole country. It’s individuals. Too many but still individuals. I don’t think painting a broad brush is healthy.”
Kerr follower @BEP_547 would prefer the coach hold his thoughts until an investigation is conducted.
“When will Steve Kerr, and others, learn to save their criticism of law enforcement until all of the story is told or until all of the video or videos are shown. There’s more to this story than what is being shown here,” @BEP_547 tweeted.
One of Kerr’s followers,@GShortty, tweeted at the coach and former NFL wide receiver Cris Carter (who re-tweeted Kerr): “34 Police officers killed in the line of duty this year. You tweet about how demoralizing that is?”
This isn’t the first time Kerr has commented on an incident of police violence involving African-Americans. On September 21, 2016, Kerr told ESPN Americans should be “disgusted” at the shooting of Tulsa-native Terence Crutcher.
“Unarmed black people are being killed indiscriminately around the country,” Kerr told ESPN in the same 2016 interview. “And that’s what happened two days ago (to Crutcher). That’s the message. That’s what matters. The other stuff you can talk about all day. Nobody is right. Nobody is wrong. But that matters. Everyone should be trying to do something, whatever is in their power, to help in that regard.”
The Tulsa officer who shot Crutcher was acquitted.
“No matter what side of the spectrum you are on, I would hope that every American is disgusted with what is going on around the country, with what happened in Tulsa two days ago, Terence Crutcher,” Kerr said in 2016. “It doesn’t matter what side you’re on, on the (Colin) Kaepernick stuff, you better be disgusted about things that are happening. And so, I understand people who are offended by his stance. Maybe they have a military family member who is offended. Maybe they lost somebody in a war and the flag and the anthem means a lot more to them than someone else.”
Kaepernick, a former NFL QB, started the anthem-kneeling movement in the summer of 2016 to protest police brutality and social injustice.
Miami Dolphins wide receiver Kenny Stills, who’s continued Kaepernick’s anthem-kneeling movement the last two years with the QB out of the league, was outraged by the video.
“This man couldn’t wait to rough up a black child. Beyond sick of seeing this. The officers in this video need to be fired and all the charges against Lucca need to be dropped. Plain and simple,” tweeted Stills.
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