Demetrick Pennie. I'd bet my next pension check that 95% of you have never heard of him.
Remember that name.
Pennie is a seventeen-year veteran of law enforcement, serving as a Sergeant with the Dallas Police Department; he is also Executive Director of the Texas Fallen Officer Foundation. Sgt Pennie holds a Bachelor of Arts degree in Criminal Justice as well as a Master's in Counseling and is working towards his Doctorate in Higher Education. He is also an adjunct professor for two major universities, specializing in the areas of cultural diversity, ethics and criminal justice. Pennie is also a veteran of the United States Army.
Recently Sgt. Pennie, who is a black man, has come under attack by a Texas judge and a Texas State Representative. Judge Andrea Martin of the 304th Circuit Court, via social media, compared Pennie to a clueless slave, eliciting a round of insults which included calling Pennie a 'coon', while Johnson compared Pennie to the Samuel L. Jackson character in the movie 'Django Unchained'.
Martin and Johnson are also black.
Why are they doing this?
It seems Demetrick Pennie, who grew up in inner city Houston and witnessed the slaying of his cousin mere days before her wedding, had the audacity to file a federal lawsuit against Black Lives Matter for inciting violence against police officers and advocating a national race war. Also named in his action are Barack Obama, Hillary Clinton, Al Sharpton, Nation of Islam cult leader Louis Farrakhan and a host of others who have expressed support for BLM in the face of police shooting deaths involving black citizens.
Since filing the suit, Pennie has received death threats numerous times and has requested investigation of those threats by the FBI.
Here's what those named in the suit, along with Martin and Johnson, either choose to ignore or simply don't understand: the vast majority of police shootings, including that of Michael Brown in Ferguson, Missouri and Tamir Rice in Cleveland, were found to be justified or that no criminal conduct on the part of police had occurred. Those decisions were made by grand jurors, citizens just like you and I.
The fact is, police have contact with the public millions of times every day in these United States. Some of these contacts involve persons who are violent, engaging in threatening conduct and/or are armed. Police officers sometimes are compelled to make split-second decisions concerning use of deadly force and in a very few instances the decisions are wrong, such as the recent Tulsa shooting of Terrence Crutcher, an unarmed black man shot by a white female police officer. That officer has been charged with manslaughter...and rightly so by all accounts of the incident I've read.
That case has yet to go to court.
Inciting or endorsing violence against police, no matter who is involved, is wrong. Conduct of police officers are governed by law, departmental rules and regulations and standard operating procedures. We are a nation founded on the principle of rule of law, where all citizens are presumed innocent until proven guilty. Sergeant Demetrick Pennie, using this country's justice system, filed suit against those who openly call for violence against police and those who support them. For that, he has been threatened with death and called vile names that would be deemed racist if Johnson or Martin, who are elected public servants, were white.
Can African Americans be racist against those who are of the same race?
Apparently not, especially if the target of racist comments are police officers who just happen to be black.
Sgt. Pennie's website is here: http://sgtpennie.com/
