The Rev. Al Sharpton insisted during a Martin Luther King Jr. commemoration that neither he nor his organization, the National Action Network, were “anti-police” but rather they were simply watchdogs for the community.
“We are not anti-police,” he said, Newsmax reported. “We respect police who put their lives on the line every day.”
He also said he fully supported “good policing” and that watching and questing police agency behavior “does not make you anymore anti-police than every time a black is arrested makes you racist.”
Mr. Sharpton called for the nation to “start talking like adults about these issues and get out of this back-and-forth schoolyard mentality,” Newsmax reported.
He capped his remarks by hugging New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio — who was among several notable politicos at the MLK event — and admitting that while they “don’t agree on everything,” the lines of communication still stayed open.
“We didn’t want a flunky,” Mr. Sharpton said of Mr. de Blasio, Newsmax reported. “We wanted a mayor, and we got a mayor that would talk to us and respect us, and we are grown enough to deal with a person who can disagree with us but respect us at the same time.”
• Cheryl K. Chumley can be reached at cchumley@washingtontimes.com.
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