By: Don Driggers
A Brooklyn teacher whose Instagram post appeared to encourage violence against police mourning slain officer Jason Rivera claims his message was “misconstrued” and that he was merely commenting on the “vulnerability” of the crowd of cops, NY Post Reported.
Chris Flanigan said he’s gotten death threats over his since-deleted Instagram story showing an overhead shot of officers flooding Fifth Avenue for Rivera’s funeral, with the caption, “5/30/20: NYPD SUV drives into a crowd of protestors. Ideal conditions for reciprocity.”
“I was really just trying to show the vulnerability of all of these police officers being in the same place at the same time which seems like a dangerous situation for anyone that would be that gathered together,” Flanigan told The Post Sunday.
Flanigan went on to tell The New York Post, ““I respect the NYPD. I do not condone violence,” he continued. “A 22-year-old police officer murdered in the line of duty is reprehensible. I’m devastated by that. I’m devastated that his partner passed a week later. These are not things that sit well with me.” Flanigan, who teaches at Coney Island Prep, said he put up the post Friday night but took it down the next morning after two friends, including one who is a cop, commented and “questioned what I meant by the post.”
“That – I was trying to use that word to almost be the inverse mirror of that. The police were now the people that were gathered together and the protestors were people that were gathered together. Both in dangerous situations but by no means implying or inciting or promoting that anyone should be a danger to anyone else.”
The New York Post, in an earlier article related the events Flanigan referred to, “incident Flanigan referenced happened in the wake of the George Floyd police murder, when an NYPD vehicle drove through a group of Brooklyn protestors that were demonstrating against police following the Minnesota man’s death. Then-Police Commissioner Dermot Shea said cops did not use the vehicle in a forceful manner. Former Mayor Bill de Blasio called footage of the incident “troubling” but also blamed protestors for not moving out of the way. No injuries were reported.
People are quick to post on social media and don’t often realize that the internet lasts forever. It is difficult, if not impossible to convey the true sentiment. With the strong anti-cop sentiment of many far leftists, who tend to gravitate to the education profession, it was quite easy to misunderstand the intentions of Flanigan’s post. The younger the teacher, the more woke they tend to be. We shall never really know the real intensions other than what the teacher claims, however this is yet another lesson about social media and the implications of letting it all out before the public.
