“None of the Black Lives Matter supporters shoved me,” I thought as I walked away from a pro-police rally Tuesday, July 14, in Northfield, turning multiple times to make sure I wasn’t being followed.
No, it was a small number of the Back the Blue folks, the defenders of law and order, who threatened me, pushed me, blocked me from doing my job, put their hands on me, tried to intimidate me, told me to do things humanly impossible and called me names.
And it’s a shame because this small minority – not representative of all the people there, about 200 of them in all – turned what could have been a peaceful showing of support for law enforcement ugly, at least while I was there. They apparently hung around until after 10 p.m.
“Shut the !@#$ up, that’s what my name is,” one man said, calling me a coward because I was wearing a mask like “one of the sheep.”
His buddy beside him, wearing a mask, told me to go !@#$ myself and to “go over there, fag boy.”
This was because I asked them why they were there and what was the threat to police they were rallying against. Neither would give his name.
When U.S. Rep. Jeff Van Drew showed up unexpectedly, a short, heavy man with a cane bodily blocked me from getting close to the congressman until a local official came over to make him behave. I was then shoved and called a punk, which I am — having grown up with that great angst-filled music of the ’80s — so my feelings weren’t hurt.
I did get close enough to record what Van Drew was saying, but a woman ironically jumped out of the crowd twice and grabbed me, telling me to stand back. I may have said a few bad words and I certainly thought them.
After Van Drew spoke, I was shouted at and shoved enough that police officers and a local politician who saw me in distress came to my aid and escorted me out, where I got an exclusive interview with the controversial congressman. The freshman House member defended his very public switch from the Democratic Party to the Republican Party in January 2019, just months after being elected, saying he had support from voters of all stripes and that he was elected to represent them all, not just the Democrats.
Sadly, it wasn’t just a reporter the bullies cursed at and called names. No, they also spewed out their vitriol to a small gathering of folks in the Black Lives Matter movement, maybe 25 total.
The entire event was more of a political stunt than anything, based on misinformation and outright lies that Councilwoman Susan Korngut was planning to propose defunding the police department.
No evidence was found to indicate she ever said so and she denied doing so. She did call for a review of police procedures in the wake of the murder of George Floyd by a police officer in Minnesota.
WPG radio host Harry Hurley may have started the rumor, writing it in an article on the station’s website, but Facebook groups ran with it, with posts generating responses in the hundreds and bringing hundreds of people out to what could have been a more pleasant event.
Craig D. Schenck, a resident of Northfield, is editor of The Sentinel of Somers Point, Linwood and Northfield, and edits and contributes to sister newspapers the Ocean City Sentinel, the Upper Township Sentinel and the Cape May Star and Wave.
