Another Missouri police officer faces internal investigation after being tied to an online rant about the people he’s tasked to serve.
In a video posted to YouTube in May, officer Dan Page gives a bizarre, rambling talk in front of a local chapter of Oathkeepers, a group of former and current law enforcement and military personnel that promises to obey the Constitution over direct orders. Page, who identifies himself as a St. Louis County police officer, has previously been seen on camera handling the ongoing protests in Ferguson, Mo., over 18-year-old Michael Brown, who was killed by officer Darren Wilson.
Page’s speech and subsequent Q&A, which clocks in just over an hour, begins with a history of the U.S. Constitution but quickly delves into promises of imminent national collapse, his theories of the Biblical apocalypse, and claims that he was told of the 9/11 attacks a month before they happened. Throughout, he peppers his rant with rails against “females who are not happy being women” and “sodomites,” and he repeatedly expresses a willingness to kill people.
It’s that last bit that’s particularly concerning to the county police department. Its media relations voicemail line is full and didn’t accept the Daily Dot’s call, but on Friday, Police Chief John Belmar described the video to CNN as “so bizarre,” and said he’d placed Page on administrative leave.
Another Missouri cop, Kansas City Police Officer Marc Catron, faces an internal review for racist Facebook posts.
“As a police chief, it’s embarrassing when you find out about this,” Belmar said of Page. “It was uploaded in April, but I don’t do Facebook, I don’t surf YouTube.”
The video of Page is embedded below. In case you don’t have more than an hour to delve deep, we’ve provided a list of highlights.
- He claims that his updated birth certificate, which changed his ethnicity from “caucasian” to “white,” is an example of “psychological warfare.”
- “Incidentally, there are four sodomites on the Supreme Court.”
- At one point, he holds up a USA Today story about former Supreme Court Justice John Paul Stevens’s laundry list of dream amendments to the Constitution, including refining the First, Second, and Eighth Amendments. In the video, Page seems unaware that Stevens retired from the Supreme Court four years earlier.
- “I’m 60 years old. I died a long time ago.”
- He claims President Barack Obama is an “illegal alien,” and showed photos of a trip he took to Kenya, which he claims is Obama’s birthplace.
- He says he was an Army Green Beret, which means “we can kill you any way we want.”
- He showed a photo of a Korean soldier he once met and really liked, who smiled all the time because he enjoyed his job.
- He places institutional problems in the military squarely on two groups. “In the military right now, you have open sodomy,” he claims. Also, “I deeply resent this, we have our first female Green Beret,” which seems to be a reference to Kathleen Wilder, who in 1981 was deemed qualified for the elite unit, though she didn’t serve on it.
- He claims Obama allows “hundreds of thousands of Muslims to come in [the U.S.] every week,”
- He claims Sufi Muslims aren’t violent until they come into contact with “a more dominant Muslim,” at which point they become killers.
- When he uses his computer in front of his audience, his default homepage is www.raptureready.com. He finds things online with the Dogpile search engine.
- He has no problems reconciling his purported Christianity with violence: “I believe in Jesus Christ as my lord and savior, but I’m also a killer. I’ve killed a lot, and if i need to I’ll kill a whole bunch more. If you don’t wanna get killed, don’t show up in front of me.”
- “[The federal government is] going to take your kids from you and put them in indoctrination camps.”
- “Those of you who have diabetes, high blood pressure, heart disease, kidney disease, you’re dead. Your maximum effective lifespan is 24 hours once this thing hits.” (He doesn’t say what “this thing” is.)
- As an officer, he says he’s tired of answering domestic violence calls. “Just kill each other and get it over with.”
- He thinks his demographic is singled out in the U.S. “The definition of a terrorist is a white male, one who believes in Jesus Christ, one who believes in the Second Amendment, one who believes in a third party.”
- His prophecies have some trouble with basic arithmetic. He makes reference to an “80-10-20 plan,” referring to percentages who are willing to stand up to the federal government. “80 who will, 20 who don’t care one way or the other, and the 10 percent who resist,” he says.
- In the coming world, he says, women won’t be able to relax and put on perfumes and lotions. “The day is gonna come when you wanna sit and put smelly-good on, and relax. And it’s not gonna happen.”
Near the end of his talk, Page says he didn’t realize this was an Oathkeepers event; he thought he was speaking to a “church group.”
Screengrab via Merry bearsky/YouTube
