A Washington, D.C. police memorial service for fallen officers took a major turn Monday when a black man with a microphone helped expose exactly why police are so frustrated with the media.
During the 36th annual Washington Area Law Enforcement Officers Memorial Service, the man toting two megaphones rode by on a bicycle shouting expletives and disrupting the ceremony.
He was yelling “God bless” and told the crowd to put their “hands in the air” to receive a “fucking blessing.” His shouts became increasingly more obscene.
Several police officers went after the man and were followed by reporters. Once the officers had stopped the man, one officer became irate with the media filming the spectacle.
“You don’t want to get a shot of that, sir?” officer Brett Parson said. “You don’t want to catch the police doing something right?”
NBC4 Washington reporter Tom Sherwood can be seen in the video apparently instructing his camera man to stop recording before Parson storms away.
“I’m not mad,” Parson tells Sherwood as Sherwood followed him and repeatedly called his name apologetically.
The Daily Caller News Foundation caught up with Parson after his comments to ask him about his frustration with media coverage of police violence.
Parson said he wanted the media “to show the officers doing the right thing” but that they are only interested in police using force.
“Are you going to report that the DC police did an excellent job getting a protester out of here?” Parson told TheDCNF. “Is that going to be your headline? Of course not. It wouldn’t be.”
Sherwood told TheDCNF that he knows Parson personally and that there are no hard feelings.
D.C. Park Police Captain Mike Libby, who attended the ceremony but was not involved in the incident, told TheDCNF false media narratives encourage things like the Baltimore riots.
“You can see it over and over where instead of the truth getting out, people put speculation out before we know the truth,” he told TheDCNF. “Probably some reporters, some news agencies go out of their way to try to be fair. Then there are plenty who are in it for the money, trying to sell a newspaper, sell a story, or there’s people who have an agenda of some sort or the other.”
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