In the wake of a carjacking that resulted in a career criminal opening fire and severely wounding two upstate New York police officers, a fellow at Amherst College went on a social media tirade against the police, which included complaints that they had run stop signs to respond to the call of officers down, and accusing a mayoral candidate of “sucking cop cock.”
Ben Brucato, who is listed on the faculty page for his work in Amherst’ Center for Humanistic Inquiry, and notes the association in his bio, tweeted out a message on August 22 that “two Troy cops got shot.”
Within minutes of posting knowledge of the shooting, Brucato witnessed what WNYT described as a “rush to Troy to help” after hearing that “two officers were down.”
He responded by complaining that two of the responding officers had run a stop sign in front of his house.
Cop just sped down Pinewoods Ave at about 80-100mph and blew right through the stop sign in front of our house.
— Ben Brucato (@BrucatoBen) August 23, 2015
Another cop just sped down Pinewoods, probably about 60 mph, blew right through the stop sign in front of our house without slowing down.
— Ben Brucato (@BrucatoBen) August 23, 2015
Two Troy cops got shot. https://t.co/x0OGEfWJhe
— Ben Brucato (@BrucatoBen) August 23, 2015
Brucato would also warn that “the boys in blue are going to run you down even though there doesn’t appear to be a ‘suspect on the loose.’” The suspect had been shot dead when the wounded officers returned fire.
He later justified the shooting of Officers Chad Klein and Joshua Comitale by suggesting that the carjacker simply “feared for his life.”
Perhaps even more outrageous was what Brucato’s anti-blue lives anger meant for Democrat mayoral candidate, Rodney Wiltshire.
Wiltshire tweeted thoughts and prayers for the downed officers, and thanked them for keeping residents safe. A dismayed Brucato responded by chastising the candidate for saying nothing about the criminal killed by police, and accused Wiltshire of “sucking cop cock.”
Wiltshire’s sucking cop cock and doesn’t say a thing about the man killed by police. https://t.co/3glDOHFQ6a
— Ben Brucato (@BrucatoBen) August 23, 2015
An inquiry was sent to Amherst College regarding Brucato’s vulgar anti-police sentiments. While the school’s fellow clearly tweets as a “postdoc at Amherst College,” the school distanced themselves.
Caroline Hanna, the director of media communications at Amherst, wrote the following:
“Dr. Brucato is a fellow in our Center for Humanistic Inquiry this academic year. The views he expresses in his personal social media accounts are entirely his own.”
Prior to responding however, the school presumably contacted Brucato about the inquiry. He proceeded to contact conservative websites, threatening editors should they continue to publish the work of the author who had made the inquiry.
“Should you continue to publish his writing,” Brucato wrote, “it would set an unacceptable precedent that [publication] is willing to work with those who want to silence their critics rather than engage them in debate.”
Subsequent inquiries to Amherst College have remained unanswered.
Rusty Weiss is a long-time political analyst and editor of the New York political blog, The Mental Recession. His work has appeared at The Daily Caller, FreedomWorks and Fox News. He currently writes for The Political Insider and Headline Politics.