After a college student shared his sentiments on police officers and cancel culture, his woke professor became combative. The confrontation was caught on video, and her angry attack has left many wondering what’s going on with our education system.
Braden Ellis, a student at Cypress College in Southern California, delivered a presentation on cancel culture and how it is “destructive and tearing our country apart” during a remote communications class. Following his presentation, there was a 10-minute question-and-answer session. That’s when things took an unexpected turn as a confrontation between Ellis and his professor ensued.
During his presentation, Ellis discussed “Paw Patrol,” a children’s cartoon about search and rescue dogs aimed at kids ages 2-4. One of the canine characters is positively depicted as a police officer. That positive depiction caused the outrage mob to attempt to cancel the cartoon in June of 2020 in light of the anti-police sentiment stemming from the Black Lives Matter movement, The Daily Wire reported.
Anti-police activists, professors, and journalists took to social media to decry “Paw Patrol” and explain why it was allegedly bad because it reinforced the idea that police are helpful. Ellis disagreed with the cancel culture, calling police officers “heroes,” a sentiment with which his teacher strongly disagreed, according to The Blaze.
In fact, the woke professor decided to berate Ellis over his belief that the “good majority” of police officers are “heroes” during the allotted 10-minute question and answer session, which was supposed to be for students to respond to the presentation. Instead, the professor used the designated time to scold Ellis for his views, and it was all captured on video.
“So you brought up the police in your speech a few times. So, what is your main concern?” the professor began. Failing to give Braden Ellis time to respond, she continued, “The issue is systemic because the whole reason we have police departments in the first place, where does it stem from? What’s our history? … It stems from people in the south wanting to capture runaway slaves.”
However, an article on “How the U.S. Got Its Police Force,” published by Time, tells a slightly different story, claiming that, historically, Colonial America used an informal, for-profit, privately funded night-watch system “mostly to look out for fellow colonists engaging in prostitution or gambling.” Eventually, this system proved inefficient and publicly-funded police forces emerged, but not for the reason the woke professor suggests:
The first publicly funded, organized police force with officers on duty full-time was created in Boston in 1838. Boston was a large shipping commercial center, and businesses had been hiring people to protect their property and safeguard the transport of goods from the port of Boston to other places, says [Gary] Potter [a crime historian at Eastern Kentucky University]. These merchants came up with a way to save money by transferring to the cost of maintaining a police force to citizens by arguing that it was for the “collective good.” [Source: Time]
While the article recognizes that the preservation of the slavery system was a driving force for the development of some police forces in the South, where slave patrols were tasked with chasing down runaways and preventing slave revolts, it simply is not the “whole reason” our modern police departments exist, as the woke professor alleged.
After the professor’s remark, another classmate chimed in to suggest that maybe the police shouldn’t be labeled as heroes and “maybe they don’t belong on a kids show.” Ellis, of course, disagreed, saying, “I think cops are heroes and they have to have a difficult job. But, we have to —” before his professor quickly and flagrantly interrupted to ask, “All of them?”
“I’d say a good majority of them,” Ellis responded. “You have bad people in every business and every —,” he continued before being once again cut off in an attempt to alter the direction of the conversation by the professor, who alleged that “a lot of police officers have committed atrocious crimes and have gotten away with it and have never been convicted of any of it.” However, Ellis was undeterred.
“This is not popular to say, but I do support our police. And, we have bad people, and the people that do bad things should be brought to justice, I agree with that,” Ellis explained. When his professor quickly suggested that police who have done bad things have not been held accountable, Ellis again countered, saying, “Well, I agree with you on that point [of] they should.” But, his woke professor still wasn’t happy.
“So, what is your bottom line point? You’re saying police officers should be revered? Viewed as heroes? [Do] they belong on TV shows [for] children?” she asked, to which Ellis responded, “I think they are heroes in a sense because they come to your need and they come and help you. They have problems just like every other business, but we should fix that, but —.” Once again, however, he was cut off before he could finish.
“It’s not a business,” the professor snapped, interrupting Ellis again. “I think that’s the problem, is looking at it as a business. Because they’re actually supposed to protect and serve the people,” she said. Ellis argued that the police do protect us and asked the professor who she would call if she was in trouble and facing someone armed with a knife or gun.
“I wouldn’t call the police,” the professor declared. “I don’t trust them. My life’s in more danger in their presence,” she continued. “I wouldn’t call anybody,” she alleged. When pressed further and asked what she would do if there was an intruder and whether or not she would have a firearm to defend herself, she snapped, “No!” saying she would consider it, “My time to go” before abruptly ending the discussion.
Following the confrontation, Braden Ellis reportedly told The Daily Wire that he was “shocked to hear her comments about police,” but he “stood firm” in his beliefs, adding, “We need to fight back against this liberal ideology spreading in our colleges and save America.” Indeed, it’s more than a little disturbing that a college professor would tell young adults that it’s better to die at the hands of a criminal than to call the police for help. Let’s hope she never has to practice what she preaches, but I have a strong feeling that she would be dialing 911 as fast as she can.
