Detroit NAACP outraged at state police photo with armed demonstrator at Capitol
FOX 2 - Detroit NAACP President Rev. Wendell Anthony is sounding off on the armed protests against Governor Gretchen Whitmer's Stay Home, Stay Safe order.
"I dare say if Randy Wimbley and Wendell Anthony came up to the state Capitol strapped to the hilt that you and I would not be treated with such grace, such tolerance, such understanding and such permissibility as they were treated in this instance," said Anthony.
State troopers met protestors as they went inside the Capitol last week and two appear to have taken a picture with a demonstrator.
"They are wrong as four left feet, when you put that uniform on your personal choice goes out the door," Anthony said. "You're not supposed to be partisan, you're not supposed to engage in controversy you're supposed to support and treat everybody the same."
Reverend Anthony wrote a letter to the state police director, calling for the troopers to be disciplined for violating department policy. He says the protests would have been handled differently if the demonstrators open carrying firearms were black, Hispanic or Muslim.
"It could be a peaceful demonstration," he said. "You could be kneeling in prayer and police would lift you up and arrest you and beat you."
Anthony even went as far as to call the protests an act of terrorism.
"I believe in protest, in the First Amendment, but you're not entitled to intimidate and provocateur through this process and provoke folk and endanger the lives of other people," he said.
"I have respect for Rev. Anthony, I think he's doing a good job as president of the NAACP, he does a lot of community things, but to throw out words he threw out do nothing but incite the flames," said Attorney Terry Johnson.
Johnson, an African-American attorney who leans right of center, says under Michigan law, the protest was not an act of terrorism.
"Just because you don't like it, just because you disagree with it, doesn't give you the right to say those kinds of things," Johnson said. "Just like in other protests, you don't want people using words against another side.
"For example a lot of people say with Black Lives Matter they're not American. Yeah they are Americans, they absolutely are. They just have a different view on things just like these folks have a different view on things."
State legislators on both sides of the aisle expressed deep concerns about the protests. Now there's a move to ban the flying of the confederate flag at the Capitol, which took place during the demonstration.
And the state is considering banning the open carrying of firearms inside the Capitol. There has been no response as of yet to the letter from the NAACP.