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An impassioned Mike Krukow: ‘BS’ to tone down rhetoric, ‘it is our duty to protest’

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USA TODAY NETWORK-Wisconsin-Imagn Content Services, LLC


Mike Krukow’s background, both professionally and personally, lends a certain gravity to his speech, and his status as Giants broadcaster gives him a platform. When he speaks, people listen. So here are the angry words he delivered Monday morning after a historically furious weekend in the United States, as protests and riots rang across the country, as instances of police brutality were captured on video at rallies, as a country refused to be silent following the deathh of George Floyd.

“My dad was a cop, my grandfather was a cop. All my uncles were cops. My sister was a cop,” Krukow began on “Murph & Mac” on KNBR. “What we have seen in the death of George Floyd sickens me to the core. I’m just completely rocked about this. It is our duty to protest. It is not our duty to loot, that is as disgusting as the crime itself. But it is our duty to stand and you gotta say, ‘This is wrong.’ You have to do it. We’re being asked to tone down the rhetoric in our press, and that is BS. Now more than ever the outrage has to be written. And it has to be written by us. By you and me, we have to write our letters to our congressmen and our congresswomen and our senators and the president, you gotta let everybody know you’re not happy. This cannot go on. This is disgusting.

“This is 2020 and we are watching this, this senseless murder of a man who could not defend himself and was saying as he laid down on the ground, ‘I can’t breathe.’ It’s appalling.

“You have to tell your children and you have to tell your grandchildren, ‘This is not right.’ Let them see how mad you are. Let them see how disgusted you are. That’s the only thing we can do. We can protest this, we have to. This is not right. I’m not well with this and I don’t know anyone who is. It’s disgusting.

“All of my friends, it’s all we’re talking about. This has just gone on too far. We can’t be silent now. We cannot. You’ve gotta protest. You’ve gotta say everything that you mean and mean it. And put it on paper and send it out and let your children and grandchildren see how upset you are.”

Krukow cautioned that he understands the position the police are in; it’s a job that comes with stresses, with pressures, with anxiety, with split-second decisions. Though Derek Chauvin knelt on Floyd’s neck in Minneapolis for more than eight minutes.

“I fear for the safety of our police,” Krukow said. “It’s not easy. It’s harder now than it ever has been. When you have a badge, you’ve gotta wear it responsibly. You cannot use it to be a bully or be a murderer. You can’t.

“It sickens the people who do police work for a living. They watch this as we watch this. They know how hard it is out there and perhaps they’ve seen things that none of us have ever even dreamt of. What we watched in the death of George Floyd, it’s absurd, it’s how does this happen? How do we let this happen in our society? It’s so upsetting. It’s upsetting to everybody. It does not justify looting. It doesn’t. It should encourage protest. I totally believe that is what we have to do.

“The looting is not right. That’s just criminal. Now our police are more at risk than ever. Our society right now — think about 2020, this year sucks. It absolutely sucks. We’re watching something now and going through an experience together as we have done so well together in dealing with COVID, and now we need to come together and we need to resolve what’s going on across this country.”