First Amendment protection "unfortunate?"

Toledo Police Department Chief Mike Navarre this week characterized free speech protection for demonstrating neo Nazis as unfortunate. This came in the wake of riots spawned hours after the demonstration concluded.


As Buckeye Firearms Association's Ken Hanson reminded readers in a recent op-ed, chief Mike Navarre's Toledo Police Department has a rough history when it comes to the Second Amendment.

Having once told store owners enduring a wave of violent robberies they should not take up arms to defend themselves but instead just try to "get away from the bullets", having arrested a man for exercising his right to carry in a city park, and having confiscated a handgun from a citizen who had gone out and obtained an emergency concealed carry license to protect himself from gangs in his neighborhood, the evidence of his disdain for the Second Amendment could not be more clear.

Navarre's latest opposition to the Bill of Rights may not come as a surprise to people who are aware of his views on the right to bear arms, but Toledo police chief Mike Navarre is bound to turn a few heads...

The following are Mike Navarre's October 17 comments to the Toledo Blade in reference to a small group of Nazis who attempted to hold a march in a Glass City neighborhood:

"Unfortunately, they [the marchers] have the right under the First Amendment, and as distasteful as it is, we have to protect them," he said.

Their message is indeed distasteful, but it is hardly "unfortunate" that American citizens, no matter how hateful, have the right to free speech.

The rioting that broke out during a counter-protest (which incidentally had been promoted as an "Erase the Hate" event) has highlighted Mike Navarre's incompetence for a whole nation to see.

To wit, when a citizen repeatedly complained that gang activity was happening in his neighborhood, Toledo police called his claims "exaggerated" and confiscated the gun he had purchased for his own protection to provide a "cooling off" period.

To wit, last week, Navarre told the Toledo Blade that the neighborhood where the riots occurred is a "relatively quiet neighborhood," and that his officers have not had many complaints of gang activity.

Yet immediately following the riots, we learned that Navarre and other city officials had learned of the potential for a gang violence outbreak before it even began. From the Toledo Blade:

...When a dispatcher reported that gang members wearing colors were gathering along Stickney, Central, and Ketcham avenues, Chief Navarre began to worry.

“This is not going to be pretty,” he predicted. “I’m starting to get a pretty bad feeling.”

Residents in the neighborhood had even earlier signs of trouble.

Ramon Perez, a Lagrange Village Council member, said he was canvassing the neighborhood for days before the planned march.

“Even Friday night, at Bronson and Stickney, that’s all we were hearing: ‘We’re taking this place down.’”

And later in the story:

“There’s a lot of unrest, there’s a lot of anger among young people living in that neighborhood,” [Navarre] said. “...

So which is it? A quiet neighborhood with few reports of gang activity, or a tinderbox where angry young gang members loiter on street corners?

After advocating gun control policies that would eradicate the Second Amendment in the name of safety, and after now calling the First Amendment rights of a few extremists "unfortunate", Mike Navarre and other city officials have a lot of explaining to do about why they failed to keep this neighborhood safe.

The Buckeye Firearms Association has more on Navarre and his problems with the Bill of Rights.