Posted on by Californiacontrarian

William Kelly


Since I started trying to devote my Sunday essays to individuals with courage and fortitude, it seems like there are more and more candidates for this honor. 

This week I chose Norfolk Police Lt. William Kelly. My guess is that very few of you are familiar with Lt. Kelly as his story is a poster child for “wokeness” destroying the life of someone, and as we are all becoming more aware, Main Stream Media does not report on this sort of thing. It was the Guardian, Britain’s liberal newspaper that “ratted” on William Kelly even though Lt. Kelly had expressed his opinion anonymously. 

What dastardly abhorrent thing did Mr. Kelly do? It certainly must have been pretty despicable as this Virginia police officer lost his job and his retirement as a consequence.

In terminating Kelly, Norfolk city manager Chip Filer said, “His egregious comments erode the trust between the Norfolk Police Department and those they are sworn to serve.”

“Egregious,” of course means shocking and outrageous, and certainly “egregious comments” cannot be tolerated in a police officer! Fire the s.o.b.!

Meanwhile, Norfolk Police Chief Larry Boone suggested that Kelly’s comments eroded trust between police officers and the public. Wow! There you have it … two high ranking officials publicly  saying that Officer Kelly’s action was “eroding trust between the police and those they are sworn to serve.” Wow! It had to have been pretty bad!  Firing the nineteen year veteran and thus taking away his pension is much too lenient for what he said and did. String the bastard up!

But wait. What did Lt. Kelly actually do?

From the New York Daily News in April of this year:

Kelly reportedly donated $25 to the fund using his department email address, and wrote a message of encouragement to Rittenhouse that read, “God bless. Thank you for your courage. Keep your head up. You’ve done nothing wrong. Every rank and file police officer supports you. Don’t be discouraged by actions of the political class of law enforcement leadership.”

By donating to Rittenhouse’s defense fund, Kelly said he was promoting the foundational American ideal that everyone is innocent until proven guilty.

“I was interested in giving him the chance to defend himself in front of a jury. I know that lawyers are expensive, and it’s hard sometimes to get the message out there. I wanted to make sure that he had the means necessary to make his claim in court,” Kelly told the Daily Mail. “It mattered. The comments I made, my belief that he has a strong claim for self-defense was a personal opinion. I didn’t want my city or police department to be associated with it, so I chose to donate anonymously.”

Officer Kelly (or perhaps at this moment in time, I should say ‘ex-officer’ Kelly) continued:

“This is America. You can agree with your neighbors and other people in your community and you can disagree with them. Just because someone has a different opinion than you, it doesn’t mean you should destroy their lives, take their job away.”

“If I had a different opinion and I donated to a fund for the victims and made comments about how Mr. Rittenhouse was a murderer, nobody would have cared or tried to get me fired,” Kelly added.

So let me get this straight … A nineteen year police veteran was fired from his job and lost his pension, because he anonymously supported the concept of innocent until proven guilty.

Kelly has filed a grievance seeking to be reinstated.

In that grievance, Kelly accused Boone of hypocrisy for attending a Black Lives Matter protest in uniform last May after the murder of George Floyd.

Hmmm! Looks like another case ‘one-way wokeness’ which is especially interesting now the Kyle Rittenhouse has been found innocent.

11/28/21

www.californiacontrarian.com

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