A 23-year-old rookie Jersey City police officer was killed over the weekend by a gunman who boasted to witnesses he was “going to be famous” before fatally shooting Officer Melvin Santiago. The gunman ultimately died in a shootout with police, and he widow has since told the press he husband “should’ve taken more [officers] with him.”
A local reporter covering the tragedy was subsequently suspended for comments he made about the nature of the shooting. News 12 reporter Sean Bergin argued during one his reports that the “anti-cop mentality that has so contaminated America’s inner cities” is largely the result of “young black men growing up without fathers.” The suspect in this case, Lawrence Campbell, was a 27-year-old black man.
News 12 has since scrubbed Bergin’s report from its archives, but below is an unedited version of the segment.
“We were besieged, flooded with calls from police officers furious that we would give media coverage to the life of a cop killer. It’s understandable,” Bergin reported. “We decided to air it because it’s important to shine a light on the anti-cop mentality that has so contaminated America’s inner cities. This same, sick, perverse line of thinking is evident from Jersey City, to Newark and Patterson to Trenton.”
“It has made the police officer’s job impossible and it has got to stop,” he continued. “The underlying cause of all of this, of course: Young black men growing up without fathers. Unfortunately, no one in the news media has the courage to touch that subject.”
A source with direct knowledge of the situation confirmed to TheBlaze that Bergin has been suspended and may be fired. The source said Bergin was asked not to report to work on Monday and Tuesday as the station figures out how to handle the situation.
On radio this morning, Glenn reacted to Bergin’s assertion and suspension. While Bergin framed his remarks in regards to the black community, Glenn believes it could and should be extended to men in general.
“So he's saying there's an anti-cop perversion that is happening in our cities. I believe that to be true… There's an anti-cop attitude that is starting to spread to all communities… It's also happening in white communities. There is an anti-cop feeling that is starting to spread in this country, period.”
Stu was willing to defend Bergin’s generalization because he was calling out a larger issue in the media. The bluntness, in Stu's opinion, was used to prove a point.
“Well, the reason he's saying it as overtly as he is, he's trying to point out that no one will say it,” Stu said. “And the destruction of the family is obviously a cause of some of the problems that have happened. [But] it's in every community.”
“Bill Cosby is always in trouble when he says stuff like this. And he's right,” Glenn concluded. “It's happening in all of our communities. Men are not being men anymore.”
Front page image courtesy of the AP