Is killing cops good or bad?
In Rochester, New York, there seems to be some disagreement on that issue.
On Monday, Rochester buried a murdered cop. Three days later, on Thursday, Rochester celebrated a guy who murdered a cop.
Two cops, actually.
Maybe that’s just balance – providing both sides of the issue.
Or maybe it’s an explanation of why Rochester has become a cesspool of violence, with one of the highest homicide rates in the nation.
Anthony Mazurkiewicz was a grandfather with 29 years on the job when he and another officer were ambushed in their vehicle, savagely attacked from behind with a spray of gunfire. That was a couple of weeks ago in Rochester. Wavery Jones and Joseph Piagentini were young fathers at the start of their careers when they were ambushed after a call, savagely attacked from behind with a spray of gunfire. That was 50 years ago in Harlem.
A piece of trash named Kelvin Vickers is accused of killing Anthony Mazurkiewicz. A piece of trash named Anthony Bottom was convicted of killing Wavery Jones and Joseph Piagentini.
On Monday, glory-hounding politicians tried to crowd in around the edges as the family and colleagues of Anthony Mazurkiewicz laid him to rest. It was a somber and moving time, with a city seemingly paying its respects.
But that didn’t last long.
Because on Thursday, the vice president of the Rochester City Council – Mary Lupien – posted on social media an announcement of a speaking engagement that night by Anthony Bottom. Something called the People’s Liberation Program was having a panel discussion featuring cop-killing Anthony Bottom and the son of fellow cop-killer Jeral Williams. Bottom and Williams – five dead cops and a dead security guard between them – were members of the Black Liberation Army and have been hailed as heroes by progressives for years.
And they were the featured speakers three days after a cop funeral.
And they were promoted by the vice president of City Council.
That’s called push back. Some mourned the slaying of Anthony Mazurkiewicz; some didn’t. On Monday, the defenders of good spoke. On Thursday, the promoters of evil spoke.
And the promoters of evil aren’t on the periphery. Anthony Bottom has been welcomed and subsidized by a member of the Brighton Town Board, Robin Wilt, who is also a member of the New York Democratic State Committee. Mary Lupien is a long-serving member of the Rochester City Council, and is currently its vice president. She is joined on council by two other members elected on a defund-and-defame the police platform.
Likewise, the Monroe County Legislature includes elected Democrats who are in the defund-and-defame crowd, including one who posted socially that the operations of the Rochester Police Department unit which has had two members murdered in eight years should be reviewed and changed, as its tactics were clearly inappropriate. She criticized an officer killed eight years ago who she claims “chased a man without knowing who he was.”
Further, the county executive and local congressman sat cross-legged together, blocking Main Street, as part of an anti-police demonstration in the summer of 2020.
The local news business spent that summer lionizing and doing public relations for the anti-police protestors, with the newspaper profiling Anthony Bottom twice, describing him as a “community elder.” A local campus of the state university welcomed Anthony Bottom to speak as a “political prisoner,” and the president of that campus forced the university’s police chief to denounce the pro-cop Thin Blue Line flag as a symbol of white supremacy.
Most students in the county are taught “anti-racist” or “critical race theory” curricula which actively describe the police as enforcers of structural racism and white supremacy.
And so advanced is the defund-and-defame movement in Rochester that the police department is 100 officers short of its authorized strength, just as the city suffers through the bloodiest 24 months in its history. The mayor and the interim police chief – wrangling at the time to get the job permanently – recently enacted a policy that forbids officers from arresting people who throw water bottles or fire fireworks at them.
It’s not loons on the fringe who hate cops in Rochester, it’s the elites in the middle.
And it’s not Mary Lupien who will be canceled for promoting the lies of cop killers, it will be the people who criticize her for doing so.
This is a city where a murdered police officer – Anthony Mazurkiewicz, who never had a sustained complaint against him in 29 years of service – is being sued by an activist for defending the Public Safety Building during repeated attempts by protestors to storm it. This is a city where that edifice – the Public Safety Building – drew far larger crowds of citizens to fight against the police than it drew to honor a slain officer.
This is a city and county where the dominant political party holds power by feeding the beast of anti-cop bigotry, where the media, school and college communities are all arrayed against the police, where “F12” and “ACAB” are still the most common graffiti.
Which gets back to the question: Is killing cops good or bad?
In Rochester, New York, there seems to be some disagreement on that issue.