Defense Attorney Calls for Blacks To Murder Police, LAPD Investigating
Police in Southern California are investigating after a Los Angeles County attorney reportedly encouraged black Americans to kill police officers and then vowed to represent them, pro bono.
The incident comes amid increasing anti-police sentiment across the country and only weeks after two attorneys in New York were arrested for allegedly launching Molotov cocktails at New York City police during a riot.
KTTV-TV reported that San Gabriel-based criminal defense attorney Mark McBride is alleged to have authored a pair of social media posts that encouraged the killing of police officers.
While the social media posts were taken down after McBride reportedly published them, the TV station obtained screenshots of the posts, which are disturbing.
Check out the KTTV report here:
“It won’t stop until black people start murdering cops, which they should do often and with great relish. These —sucking, low IQ, can’t get into law school jarheads need an asphalt nap, during which they’re bleeding out on the street where they’re shot down,” one states, as reported by KTTV.
“I would have no problem with them. I would absolutely 100% defend to the death of any African American who picked off a cop or two. It’s time, it’s well past time.”
The “it won’t stop” is presumably a reference to anti-police sentiment across the country amid unrest following the death of George Floyd while in the custody of the Minneapolis Police Department on May 25.
Since that time, the country’s biggest cities have been enveloped in unrest, with some of the tension escalating to rampant rioting and looting, and even violent attacks against police officers.
McBride, who apparently wants to see more violence against peace officers, also expressed a desire to use his time and resources to defend people who are willing to murder officers.
According to KTTV, in another post, he wrote that he would represent those who kill cops free of charge.
“It wouldn’t be the first time I’ve defended terrorists,’ sign me up pro bono for somebody’s granddad putting a couple of hollow points between the eyes of these PTSD-addled rednecks, I’d take one or two pro bono. Easy. No problem,” the post stated, as reported by KTTV.
The disgusting posts caught the attention of the Los Angeles Police Protective League union, which represents officers in the LAPD.
The exact date the posts were said to be authored by McBride was not immediately available.
“When we first saw the comments it was disgust, it was anger,” LAPD Sgt. Jerretta Sandoz, who is the vice president of the LAPPL, told KTTV.
“There are so many good police officers in this country and to be painted with a broad brush and then threatened with bodily harm, just for wearing a uniform, it’s disheartening and disgusting,” Sandoz told the outlet.
KTTV reporter Bill Melugin, whose coverage of Los Angeles looting gave a view of the violence most mainstream media outlets avoided, confronted the attorney accused of calling for the murders of officers in-person, but McBride declined to comment, and also did not deny authoring the jarring social media posts.
“A very disheveled looking McBride came out of the room and shook his head yes when I asked him if he is Mark McBride…,” Melugin wrote. “When I told him who I was, and the story I was working on, he claimed to have not received any of my messages, told me he had nothing to say, then turned around, closed the door, and refused to make any further comment… At no point did he deny authoring the posts.”
McBride’s license to practice law is active, but the LAPPL wants to change that.
“He should definitely be disbarred and he will be reported to the state bar,” Sandoz told KTTV. “For threats, especially that vile, it’s disgusting, disheartening, and that person definitely needs to be reported and we will ensure there is a full investigation done, and that is underway.”
The LAPD is also investigating the attorney, KTTV reported, but no details about that investigation were released.
To now have three attorneys in the country’s two largest cities either engaging in, or calling for, acts of terrorism against law enforcement officers is disturbing, to say the least.
Two New York attorneys were among a trio of people accused of launching fire bombs at NYPD last month during rioting after the death of Floyd, The New York Post reported.
Urooj Rahman, 31, and Colinford Mattis, 32, allegedly threw a Molotov cocktail at an occupied NYPD vehicle during May 29 rioting, and both face terms of life in prison if they are convicted, according to the Justice Department.
These individuals were both licensed to practice in courts for a system they were violently protesting.
Lawyers are an essential part of the criminal justice system, and with three legal practitioners partaking in efforts to destabilize the country, and that system, it’s beginning to look like a pattern.
Attorneys in California, such as McBride, are required to take an oath before using their licenses.
“I solemnly swear (or affirm) that I will support the Constitution of the United States and the Constitution of the State of California, and that I will faithfully discharge the duties of an attorney and counselor at law to the best of my knowledge and ability. As an officer of the court, I will strive to conduct myself at all times with dignity, courtesy, and integrity,” the oath states, according to the Judicial Branch of California.
McBride’s actions, if committed, were not in line with the oath the swore, and further deviate from the mores of civil behavior, which are increasingly being disregarded nationwide as the very idea of law and order is under assault by activists seeking to disrupt and overthrow the country’s traditional system of governance and civility.
Statements uttered by respected professionals, such as court officers, which encourage the indiscriminate murders of officers in support of the Black Lives Matter movement, or any other movement, are dangerous, and carry a weight that might lead deranged people to act by engaging in such violence.
With multiple lawyers now apparently joining Democrats and the media in spreading anti-police rhetoric — or at least refusing to disavow a movement that encourages it — those who are tasked with upholding the country’s laws and protecting the innocent from being victimized by criminals find themselves not only with fewer allies, but with potentially more emboldened enemies.
It is a dangerous time to be a cop, and the last thing the men and women in blue need during this dark time in our country’s history is more fuel added to a fire that continues to rage with no apparent end in sight.
The country cannot allow for acts of violence against cops, many of whom are racial minorities themselves, to become accepted as a mainstream alternative to civil opposition to perceived wrongs within the criminal justice system.
Attorneys engaging in or assisting to promote violence are derelict in their duties as officers of the court, and they should be prosecuted to the fullest extent of existing law.
If indeed they are guilty of promoting the destruction of a system they vowed to protect, the punishment should be to the furthest extent of the law, too.
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