NY teacher says ‘reciprocity’ post suggesting attack on cops was ‘misconstrued’
A teacher has been forced to explain a controversial post which appeared to encourage violence against thousands of police officers mourning a slain colleague.
A Brooklyn teacher whose Instagram post appeared to encourage violence against police mourning slain officer Jason Rivera claims his message was “misconstrued” and that he was merely commenting on the “vulnerability” of the crowd of cops.
Chris Flanigan said he’s gotten death threats over his since-deleted Instagram story showing an overhead shot of officers flooding Fifth Avenue for Rivera’s funeral, with the caption, “5/30/20: NYPD SUV drives into a crowd of protesters. Ideal conditions for reciprocity.”
“I was really just trying to show the vulnerability of all of these police officers being in the same place at the same time, which seems like a dangerous situation for anyone that would be that gathered together,” Mr Flanigan told the NY Post on Sunday.
“I respect the NYPD. I do not condone violence,” he continued.
“A 22-year-old police officer murdered in the line of duty is reprehensible. I’m devastated by that. I’m devastated that his partner passed a week later. These are not things that sit well with me.”
Mr Flanigan, who teaches at Coney Island Prep, said he put up the post Friday night but took it down the next morning after two friends, including one who is a cop, commented and “questioned what I meant by the post”.
“I hadn’t thought about it for the remainder of the day, thinking I did the right thing just getting ahead of it to take it down, because I didn’t want anybody else to misunderstand it or to misrepresent myself in a way that is how it is being perceived,” he said.
“I realised the way that it was framed looked as though I was trying to incite violence and that was not at all what I wanted to come of that post and that’s why I took it down immediately.”
The incident Mr Flanigan referenced was when an NYPD vehicle drove through a group of Brooklyn protesters in wake of George Floyd’s death in 2020.
Mr Flanigan insisted that he was simply comparing the crowd of demonstrators to the massive police turnout for Rivera’s funeral Friday in Manhattan.
“I was trying to show the vulnerabilities between all the police gathered that closely together,” Mr Flanigan said.
“Nobody should be in that ground the way that they were. I thought that it was too vulnerable and I was trying to draw a parallel between those two things.”
Asked about his use of the word “reciprocity”, the math teacher claimed it was not meant to be a call for violence against cops.
“Not in the sense for people to be driving or to be doing anything similar to what the police did,” he said.
“But they put themselves in a similar position by being … all there all together and it’s similar to how the protesters were.
“That – I was trying to use that word to almost be the inverse mirror of that. The police were now the people that were gathered together and the protesters were people that were gathered together. Both in dangerous situations but by no means implying or inciting or promoting that anyone should be a danger to anyone else.”
Mr Flanigan was profiled by NY1 for his musical tributes to first responders in the early days of the Covid-19 pandemic. He told the station he felt solidarity with Black Lives Matter protesters.
Coney Island Prep, a public charter school, didn’t return multiple requests for comment.
In a separate incident on Saturday, actress Jacqueline Guzman was fired from her New York City theatre company for her online comments about the funeral, which she called “f**king ridiculous”.
This article originally appeared on NY Post and was reproduced with permission
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