Backdraft

No justice for Kevin Newcomb

Via.

Maybe you’ve seen this story:

A South Florida firefighter has been fired after anti-police comments he made in a group message following the fatal shooting of a police officer were posted to social media.

Miami Fire Chief Joseph Zahralban said Friday that a Miami firefighter was responsible for the posts that were circulated following Monday's shooting of Det. Cesar Echaverry, a 29-year-old Miami-Dade police officer…

The fire chief didn’t identify the firefighter, but firefighter Kevin Newcomb confirmed in an email to the Miami Herald that he was the writer. He told the Herald that he wanted to apologize and said he regretted his words.

Well, at least his boss didn’t rat him out.

Newcomb’s comments don’t appear in that story, which may or may not have been an editorial choice; other outlets like Business Insider have less compunction:

“Who cares? Another dead cop, probably against gun control. They didn’t give an [expletive] when kids were dying in that school shooting they stood outside,” Newcomb wrote in a group chat, per 7News….

Newcomb’s text message continued: “Cops exist for the government to exercise its monopoly on violence. They want the whole world to stop when one of theirs goes down. How many idiots I had to transport with honor guard their dead bodies from coronavirus because they all were too stupid to wear masks or get vaccinated? All cops are good for is protecting the rich property owners and the status quo. Everything else is a farce. [Expletive] the police.”

Now, if you are at all familiar with firefighter-police relations, you will know they sometimes speak of their comrades in less than laudatory terms. And I would not be shocked to learn that other firefighters have made similarly disrespectful, even similarly tasteless remarks about their fellow civil servants in other contexts, and vice-versa — with the possible exception of the “rich property owners and the status quo” bit, though, given how younger people generally view the cops, maybe it’s more common now than I suspect.

Anyway, Newcomb apologized but still got canned, in part for “conduct unbecoming of a Miami Firefighter.” And though he was fired for something he said, I haven’t heard anyone stick up for him on free speech grounds. That includes Bari Weiss, Andrew Sullivan, Zaid Jilani (though I did tell him about it!), Caitlin Flanagan, or any of the other cancelculture crybabies who are constantly blubbering that some professor was made to feel unwelcome or some rightwing monster was disinvited to give a commencement address by the big bad SJWs because of something they said.