Post by Police Moderator on Feb 18, 2012 8:08:31 GMT -5
A New Sheriff Loses His Compass: Muslims Are Not the Enemy
By Jim Cavanaugh on February 15, 2012
By Jim Cavanaugh on February 15, 2012
Editor’s Note: This post was written for Hatewatch by Jim Cavanaugh, the recently retired Special Agent in Charge of the Nashville, Tenn., office of the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives. It’s a response to a story today about a sheriff in Tennessee planning training by an anti-Muslim bigot.
Today’s Nashville Tennessean reports that Rutherford County, Tenn., Sheriff Robert Arnold has scheduled training for law enforcement officers that degrades Islam and spreads hatred. The training reportedly is to be put on by a former FBI agent named John Guandolo from the Washington, D.C., area and held at a Murfreesboro, Tenn., church. The Tennessean says that Guandolo has previously stated in training that Muslims “do not have a First Amendment right to do anything.”
That statement alone is so anti-American on its face that no law enforcement executive should ever engage a trainer who would utter it, period. It is so clearly in violation of the Constitution and the Bill of Rights that it strains any semblance of reality. Muslim Americans, it says, are people without constitutional protection, people who I suppose are to be regarded as less than other Americans.
Sheriff Arnold is newly elected, a first-term official who is doubtlessly facing a tough job. However, he should reconsider his position here and think deeply about what it means to train law enforcement officers to violate the civil rights of certain Americans. Then he should cancel the training and work with organizations like the Tennessee Sheriffs’ Association, the National Sheriffs’ Association and other law-enforcement executive organizations. He should enlist the help and experience of the Tennessee Peace Officer Standards and Training Commission to find genuinely knowledgeable trainers on those subjects that he is interested in.
If Sheriff Arnold wants training about Islam and how his deputies should interact with Muslims in the county, there already is a strong and helpful Muslim community in middle Tennessee that he can work with. I know because I’ve worked with them before. I spent 33 years in the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (ATF), and before that I was a deputy sheriff. While I was the ATF Special Agent in Charge in Nashville a few years back, the Islamic Center of Nashville was the victim of a firebombing. The Metropolitan Nashville Police Department, the ATF, the FBI and the Tennessee State Fire Marshall’s Office all came together to work the case.
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