The distasteful actions/inactions of cops in Texas when it comes to dealing with kids are in the news again. Where have you heard this before?
During the same week that surveillance video of the useless cowards who are members of the Uvalde Police Department was released, showing them retreating and waiting around in the hallways while kids were being murdered at Robb Elementary School, another member of law enforcement who took an oath “to protect and serve” in the Longhorn State is on video showing us yet again why police departments should be defunded because way too much money is spent on too many of these clowns.
A story in Houston is starting to gain national attention after Kenneth Wendt — a sergeant in Harris County — was fired from his job as a youth baseball coach due to his actions after a recent game in which the video (below) shows he’s a terrible human being, sore loser, and another example of how trash policing can be in America when it appears that he got a little too rough with a child in the postgame handshake line.
If a grown man acts like this because his team lost a 9-and-under baseball game, imagine the kind of things he’s done, and thinks, when he’s on duty in the streets “fighting crime.” As you can see in the video, Wendt bumped into the first kid in line. And if you pay closer attention you’ll see that makes this situation even worse. Watch it again. A cop who is throwing a temper tantrum after losing a baseball game with 9-year-olds in it is wearing a shirt with the “thin blue line flag” on the back, signifying his allegiance to the biggest gang in this country’s history — the police — as it appears he purposely bumps into a kid wearing Jackie Robinson’s No. 42.
Racists will say I’m reaching. People who actually “see color” understand what’s really going on.
“Nothing in the world gives you the right to do that to kids,” Prospects 9U baseball coach Victor Torres told KHOU 11 News.
“How is that even possible,” Torres said. “You hold them to a higher standard. And then you come out here and do that to kids, to 9-year-old kids.”
Like clockwork, the news station was able to find someone to defend Wendt who hit us with the ol’ “but I’ve never seen him act like this before,” as if racists haven’t always been great actors who know how to put on a facade. “We have known the Wendt family for two years and Kenny has always been a great husband, father, and coach. He spends an extraordinary amount of time coaching and helping kids and their families both on and off the field,” said a parent.
The timing of this video going viral the same week that the footage from Uvalde was released is just a coincidence, and in no way am I trying to compare the two. However, it is another example of how social media and technology have been immensely important in exposing the levels of mismanagement and apathy amongst law enforcement that have gone on for decades, and that communities of color have been complaining about and suffered under. And on Wednesday, the LAPD’s Police Commission finally determined that an LAPD sergeant violated policy when he kneeled on New Orleans Pelicans center Jaxson Hayes’ neck during an arrest last year, one summer after George Floyd, when the “knee-on-the-neck maneuver” had already been outlawed. Hayes is on video yelling “I can’t breathe.”
This is why people want the police defunded. Not because they’re unnecessary or don’t play a role in society, but because they have become militarized and have too much money spent on them (money that could be used elsewhere) when far too often the results don’t make sense financially.
Besides, if people choose a profession in which they may need to play the hero one day, at a minimum, they should embody “hero” qualities, which don’t include being cowardly, kneeling on people’s necks, and roughing up kids.