Does the pandering ever stop with politicians and public officials?

East Haven Police Chief Brent Larrabee cites former Black Panther Eldridge Cleaver as a positive influence on him after he read “Soul on Ice” during the 1960s. Cleaver was involved in the planning and ambush of Oakland police officers in a shooting in the late 1960s.

Cleaver was an admitted rapist, who acknowledged beating his wife as a means of “disciplining” her. Some of the heroes that Cleaver has cited in his past are Mao Tse-tung, Fidel Castro and Karl Marx, whose actions and political philosophy are responsible for more deaths than the Nazis under Hitler.

Cleaver comes to mind when the chief thinks of positive influences on his thinking?

I guess he was trying to impress us with how cool and enlightened he was.

It’s pathetic, but par for the course now.

James Maher

Guilford