One of the major points of democracy is that the system keeps lunatic fringe groups from setting the agenda, but Oregon is quickly becoming a democracy-free zone. One police department in the ironically-named Bend, OR has changed the name of one of the K9 unit dogs because one person complained that it was racist.
OPB reports:
For years, police officers in Bend have referred to a canine officer as “Lil’ Kim.”
Now, as the racial justice protests of 2020 have put pressure on police over their culture and tactics, Bend’s top cop denies his department ever intended to use the name of a famous Black musician for its police dog.
Chief Mike Krantz said the dog, a Belgian Malinois shepherd repeatedly identified as Lil’ Kim, in official department statements over the years, was not styled after the rapper and icon Kimberley Jones, a multi Grammy-award winning Black woman, who under her stage name Lil’ Kim has sold more than 15 million albums worldwide.
“We addressed it previously, internally, and the dog’s name is Kim,” Krantz said. The chief called “Lil’ Kim” the dog’s “nickname,” which he said stems from her petite size relative to other K-9s with the force.
So the dog isn’t named after Rapper Lil Kim and the pooch’s name isn’t actually “Lil’ Kim” but rather “Kim.” None of that matters because somebody still thinks this is racist:
This month, a Black racial justice advocate asked police to stop using the rapper’s name for their dog. Riccardo Waites said his email conversation with the chief initially stalled over Krantz denying any intentional association.
“Why are you justifying why the dog is called Lil’ Kim, instead of accepting that it’s hurting people in the community?” said Waites, the founder of the Central Oregon Black Leaders Assembly.
“While it may appear a small or inconsequential matter to some, it is not to those of us who remember how police dogs were used against peacefully protesting civil rights workers and People of Color in the 1960s and are still used as a means of crowd control and intimidation today,” said Waites.
What does a dog’s name have to do with any of that, some of which is untrue?
“It’s a little tiny black dog, K9 dog, that the police call ‘Lil’ Kim.’ If you’re a person of color, or if you’re a fan of Lil’ Kim, you know her significance in Hip Hop. You also know that she’s a gangster rapper. Just to be honest, I don’t want to see Lil’ Kim out there biting people of color,” Waites said.
Well, it’s not a black dog, she’s a Belgian Malinois shepherd with a mostly-black head. Maybe he thinks that’s the racist part, but the dog didn’t put on blackface, she was born like that. Also, she isn’t out biting people of color, she’s helping apprehend criminals. Big difference.
And although the police changed the dog’s name, Wait is still not happy because it didn’t come with sufficient ass-kissing:
“What makes it even more insensitive is that [the police chief] never acknowledged that it could hurt people, that it would be offensive to some people in the community,” said Waites.
You got the Bend Police Department to bend on something this stupid, take the W and STFU.
