Comparisons to racism and Nazism flew as a county neighboring Gotham advanced a plan to bolster the police with some help from private citizens.
(Video: ABC7NY)
Barely two weeks removed from Nassau County coming together to honor slain NYPD Officer Jonathan Diller, the partisan divide was renewed as leftists rallied against the advancement of an emergency plan to deputize civilians.
Ramping up the fear, gun grabbers deployed rhetoric referring to the proposal as nothing short of forming a “militia” akin to the Ku Klux Klan or Nazi Brownshirts.
“I think it’s completely disgraceful, first of all as a Jewish elected official, to insinuate that I would be associated with anything that represented the Nazi regime, especially stormtroopers,” Nassau County Executive Bruce Blakeman (R) told Fox News Digital. “It is absolutely reprehensible.”
Monday, area Democratic politicians and activists like Moms Demand Action and the Nassau Civil Liberties Union gathered in Mineola, New York with signs that read “No Nassau Militia” and “No Blakeman Brownshirts” while Nassau County legislature’s Minority Leader Delia DeRiggi-Whitton had previously gone on record saying, “I’ve had some people tell me it’s actually causing them a lot of anxiety.”
“It reminds them not only of the Wild West but of times in Europe with uncertainty. There was something called the Brownshirts, which was basically having civilians all of a sudden become part of law enforcement without the training,” she had added to Patch.
What the plan actually called for was the ability to deputize residents with military or police backgrounds allowing them to be stationed to protect locations like hospitals, government buildings and places of worship to free up official police to help elsewhere in an emergency like Superstorm Sandy in 2012.
“I don’t think you can depend on Albany or Washington, D.C., because they’re more interested in giving away billions of dollars to migrants who are unvetted and bringing them to our communities than they are in protecting our communities,” Blakeman had said in response to the uproar over his proposal that, thus far, merely put together a database of candidates the county would like to see trained.
“So, that’s part of the thought process in my mind…We need a group of citizens who are already trained, who already had experience in police departments and in the military and have them on reserve in the event that there would be a serious emergency,” he stated.
DeRiggi-Whitton’s reference to the Brownshirts prompted Blakeman to call for her resignation outside the Holocaust Memorial and Tolerance Center in Glen Cove last week during a news conference where he leveled the remarks constituted antisemitism on her part.
During a Monday press conference, the executive firmed up the purpose of the emergency plan when questioned as to whether or not he thought the National Guard was “insufficient.”
“The National Guard is a function of the state government that would be under the purview of the governor. And as we’ve seen, obviously, the governor said there’s no crime problem in New York, yet we have National Guard in our subways,” he said having made clear that activation of the deputized civilians would only occur if all available first responders were already called up.
Overall, of the accusations being tossed about and fear-mongering over the potential of vigilantes hitting the streets, Blakeman told Fox News Digital, “It’s just left-wing, woke, progressive stuff. They claim now that they like the police, but these are the same people who wanted to defund the police.”
Native of Brooklyn, NY, Kevin Haggerty is a graduate of Hunter College where he studied Cultural Anthropology and Geography. An avid reader and truth seeker, he currently resides in Texas with his wife and their dog and, when he isn't researching current events and their impacts, you'll find him spending time with friends and family or working on his next novel.
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