FOP President: Let Off-Duty Officers Carry At NFL Games
PHILADELPHIA (CBS) -- Chuck Canterbury, the National President of the Fraternal Order of Police, wants off-duty police officers to be able to carry their weapons into NFL stadiums.
Canterbury told Dom Giordano on Talk Radio 1210 WPHT that the practice used to be allowed and does not accept the league's reasoning behind the change.
"This isn't actually a new thing. Until 2013, off-duty police officers were able to carry in all 32 stadiums and in 2013, Roger Goodell issued a memorandum to NFL teams advising them to no longer allow that practice. The only thing that we've heard back from the NFL, we haven't heard anything from our November 20 letter, but the only thing I've seen in the media is that this will prevent blue-on-blue shootings. Well, in the 95 year history of the NFL, we've never had a blue-on-blue shooting in an NFL stadium. So it's a little bit of an excuse."
He thinks recent incidents involving players factored into the NFL's decision to limit guns at their games.
"We believe that a lot of this came up after the Plaxico Burress shooting in New York. It's absolutely ridiculous. Every stadium that I'm aware of, there's security personnel, usually detailed police officers from the local jurisdiction, [the stadium] had a gate for officers to show up, the officers knew where the armed officers were going to be sitting and it's never been a problem."
Canterbury also criticized politicians in Washington for reducing sentencing guidelines, which he thinks will lead to the release of more criminals.
"The sentencing guidelines were passed by Congress and then the President issued the Executive Order to make it so. There's a piece of legislation right now, House Bill 4006 that's going to extend some of the exact same things and it's wide spread. When you have Senator Leahy on one side and Rand Paul on the other co-introducing legislation on sentencing reform, there are issues."