Republican vice presidential nominee Sen. JD Vance (R-Ohio) spoke outside a police station in Shelby Township, Michigan today and talked about empowering police officers to do their job. Standing next to him was Shelby Township Police Chief Robert Shelide, who was investigated and suspended for his tweets during the 2020 protests surrounding George Floyd’s death.
“It’s so important for President Trump and I to ‘Back the Blue’ and make it possible for our law enforcement officers to do their job,” Vance said in his speech. He also said Vice President Kamala Harris, who is running for president, wants to “defund the police” and make it harder for law enforcement to keep the American people safe.
Shelide stood next to Vance during his remarks after introducing him and highlighting instances of migrant crime. The two were photographed talking inside the department.
In 2020, Buzzfeed News reported that Shelide called Black Lives Matter protesters “barbarians,” “wild savages,” and “subhumans.”
When former President Donald Trump threatened a military response to the, at times, violent demonstrations, Shelide seemed to endorse it, saying politicians hindered law enforcement.
“Unleash the real cops and let them take care of these barbarians,” Shelide tweeted in 2020. “I promise it will be over in 24 hours. Cops are crippled by politicians and the media.”
He also said he would “hit them with tear gas and water cannons” as well as rubber bullets.
Water cannons are infamous for usage against communities of color in the U.S. In 1963, Alabama police used water cannons to combat protestors during the civil rights Children’s Crusade protest. The Department of Justice intervened and put a stop to the harsh police response.
In 2020, protesters were tear-gassed in 100 cities across the U.S., and the nation’s biggest police departments—those of Los Angeles and New York City—used rubber bullets.
In the years since the civil unrest, tear gas has been investigated by Congress because of its safety risks, and major cities like Philadelphia and Portland, Oregon have settled with protesters who were tear gassed by both municipalities’ police forces.
Shelide also tweeted that the protesters, whom he referred to as “vicious subhumans” should be in “body bags,” or dead.
“We have lost the country to bottom feeders, savages, and weak anarchists,” he also tweeted.
In tweets identified by Buzzfeed News, Shelide also compared the COVID-19 lockdown in 2020 to Nazi Germany. At the time, Shelby Township Police Department tweeted that it was “looking into” Shelide’s tweets.
The police chief has since deleted his account. Shelide was briefly suspended for the posts but returned to the department in July 2020.
The department did not immediately respond to the Daily Dot’s request for comment.
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