Note: The above 44-second video is a video edited for length by Our Tallahassee. The full video can be viewed at the bottom of this article.
Our Tallahassee has obtained a Tallahassee Police Department recruitment video after a tip from a city source. The source claimed that the city spent $100,000 on the video total and that it’s being used quietly at recruitment events to attract police officer candidates to the Department. Two days ago, we reported that the department recently trained with Eddie Gallagher to learn “new concepts of shooting” at a training facility in Defuniak Springs. Gallagher has been convicted of war crimes in Afghanistan and Iraq, and was subsequently pardoned by Donald Trump. The City issued a statement late yesterday evening which denied that the Department hired Gallagher for the training.
Tallahassee Police Chief Lawrence Revell narrates throughout the video. The recruitment video features a progressively intense display of force as the video goes on, including the controversial Rook, which was partly funded by a grant from the Department of Justice. City Commissioners Jack Porter and Matlow were successful at requiring the department institute a policy that prohibits the Rook from being used on protestors after concerns were raised about the potential application to political protests. David Bellamy, who’s endorsed by the Police Benevolent Association has been critical of Matlow and Porter’s public policy interest in police department policy.
Taylor Biro, a member of Tallahassee’s Citizen Police Review Board, which has a very limited scope of review, said that the video raises concerns.
“It’s part of their tactic to create a curated image of what they do,” Biro said. “We empower overly resourced law enforcement to play GI Joe with our youth as targets. The opening visuals show a white family having fun on the weekends, while the rest of the video displays a war zone that only folks in our most underserved areas know as home.”
“The video continuously uses the phrase ‘Community Policing,’ which means the officers grew up in the areas they police, and they know the people they are interacting with; this cannot be our reality if we are recruiting more people from out of state. We always hear about ‘two Tallahassees,’ and this video works to maintain that reality.” Biro said.
The full five-minute-long recruitment video can be viewed here.
3 Responses
What a shame, I used to enjoy reading OT content. OT, while openly and clearly Left, used to have decent journalism and interesting reads, even for Righties. While I typically did not agree with the fundamentals of the older articles they were nonetheless interesting and worth (valuable) reads. Real disappointment to see the new normal for OT is just regurgitated content from TD authors (mostly proven, and community accepted, trash) and recycled perspectives that hold no water. Stop drinking the leftist cool aide and return to investigative journalism with factual supports. sad to think i actually used to tell my friend (righties) to read this content, just embarrassing at this point.
Precisely what information contained in the article are you alleging isn’t factual? Because you seem to be engaging in a tricky attempt to accomplish two things at once here: 1) discredit the reporting by implying and 2) level accusations of plagiarism in order to cast aspersions on the reporting.
What exactly in the article consists of “leftist cool aide [sic]” and if it’s fake or untrue, then why did TPD feel it necessary to issue a denial (that looks like a poorly conceived lie)?
Common man! LOL. You might not read so well
See if you can objectively gather the information below and then try to re-understand my prior post, extra credit do this little task for other OT articles and you’ll get the fundamental basis i must be “implying and..” what?
https://ourtallahassee.com/eddie-gallagher-tallahassee-police-department/
https://www.tallahassee.com/story/news/2022/08/08/tallahassee-police-officers-train-navy-seal-eddie-gallagher-donald-trump/10264159002/
https://www.wtxl.com/news/local-news/tallahassee-police-department-citizens-review-board-respond-to-photo-involving-eddie-gallagher
Just to give you the answer, the articles (here) are clearly biased disdain toward TPD and the information (from OT) is select to the reader to advance that narrative. Its plainly obvious to anyone who wants the full context of the situations. My point is simple, find clear factual instances that compel us (the readers) to the common answer… and reasonable people will support the cause. Nobody wants this smoke and mirrors tactics about watch a recruitment video and speculate about a training facility to come to some conclusions about TPD the author wants readers to come too.