Police Union Objects To School Visit by Ohio State Historian Hasan Kwame Jeffries

The Fraternal Order of Police is objecting to an Ohio State University professor’s visit to a local school because of comments he made about police on social media.

Hasan Kwame Jeffries, a history professor at Ohio State and one of the advising historians for the National Civil Rights Museum in Memphis, is leading a workshop Thursday night at Olentangy Local School District on discussing racism with children.

Gary Wolske, president of the Ohio Fraternal Order of Police, says that’s inappropriate. 

“When a person texts or tweets things that the Fraternal Order of Police has killed more people than the Klu Klux Klan, that’s sort of outrageous,” he says.

Wolske refers in particular to a tweet from Jeffries on Oct. 29, 2017, which he sent in response to an SFGate article on the Park Service canceling a Black Panther Party legacy project in California. The Fraternal Order of Police was among the groups who criticized the proposal.

Jeffries stands by his tweet.

“Even when the Klan and other terrorist groups were the most active, far more African Americans died at the hands of police,” says Jeffries.

And Jeffries says that’s important in the context of the Civil Rights Movement.

“Members of the police were responsible for more deaths, and that was a motivating factor for African-American organizing, throughout the United States," he adds. "That is not hyperbole. That is fact." ...