In newsletter columns, Arlington police lieutenant writes, ‘Let’s meet violence with violence’
Richard Pedrini has defended his columns and called his writing "tongue-in-cheek political satire" meant solely for Massachusetts Police Association members.
An Arlington police lieutenant was placed on paid administrative leave Tuesday after he penned columns in a law enforcement organization newsletter with strong rhetoric aimed at politicians, immigrants, criminal justice reform, and social justice campaigns, and that urged officers to “meet violence with violence.”
Richard Pedrini, the incoming executive director of the Massachusetts Police Association and a member of its executive board, was relieved of duty following a MassLive report on several remarks he wrote this year in pieces published in “The Sentinel,” the association’s official publication.
“I am sick and tired of the social justice warriors telling us how to do our jobs,” he wrote in one of three “Man on the Street” columns. “It’s time we forget about ‘restraint,’ ‘measured responses,’ ‘procedural justice,’ ‘de-escalation,’ ‘stigma-reduction,’ and other feel-good BS that is getting our officers killed. Let’s stop lip-synching, please! Let’s meet violence with violence and get the job done.”
A member of the Arlington Police Department since 1996, Pedrini wrote the pieces through his membership in the nonprofit, police advocacy group, according to Arlington officials, who said both the town and the department are investigating the matter.
“The columns written by Mr. Pedrini in the Sentinel newsletter directly contradict the values, morals and mission statement of the Arlington Police Department,” Police Chief Frederick Ryan said in a statement. “Such remarks risk eroding the public trust that municipal police departments in Massachusetts have worked so hard to build in recent years. I disavow the remarks in the strongest possible terms, and this matter will be dealt with swiftly and certainly.”
Two of the columns focus on the deaths of Yarmouth Police Sgt. Sean Gannon and Weymouth Police Sgt. Michael Chesna, both of whom were killed in the line of duty earlier this year.
People who kill police are “animals that can only be ‘rehabilitated’ when they are put down,” Pedrini wrote.
“He is a rabid varmint, a vile piece of human excrement, and an oxygen thief who doesn’t deserve to walk among us,” he wrote about Thomas Latanowich, the man accused of killing Gannon.
Pedrini also had tough words for the passage of the state’s criminal justice reform bill this year — writing that it is a “ridiculous piece of shi…I mean legislation” — as well as U.S. Sen. Elizabeth Warren and Somerville Mayor Joseph Curtatone.
Writing about Curtatone’s announcement that Columbus Day would become Indigenous Peoples’ Day in his city, Pedrini wrote “some folks will say anything to please the Antifa, (Black Lives Matter), America-hater crowd.”
“How about that nut who decided to ruin the Fourth of July in NYC by climbing up the Statue of Liberty?” he wrote in one column. “Just your typical self-absorbed radical whose sole motive is to piss off regular Americans. I know I’m not the only one who was rooting for her to fall…and land on (Colin) Kaepernick.”
Warren received criticism from Pedrini over her comments that the country’s criminal justice system is racist “front to back.”
In another long-ranging column, he compared an immigrant caravan to the 1941 Japanese attack against the United States at Pearl Harbor:
I have to chuckle at our border enforcement. The federal government is sending troops to the border and the liberals complain. Then we’re told, they have no enforcement authority. Meanwhile, a ‘caravan’ of illegals is traveling up through Mexico to demand all the rights of US citizens when they get here. This is a ‘no‐win’ for our troops. Can you see the reports on CNN? Our soldiers mixing it up with women and children who have been manipulated into thinking they can just show up here. Back on December 7th, 1941, a caravan of Japanese planes tried this in Hawaii. We shot at them. Hell, we didn’t even suspend posse comitatus. The famed Japanese Admiral Yamamoto once said, ‘You cannot invade the mainland United States. There would a rifle behind every blade of grass.’ How times have changed. Today, we’d let them land on our airstrips.
A request for comment left with the association for Pedrini was not returned Tuesday afternoon. But in an interview with WBUR, he defended his columns and called his writing “tongue-in-cheek political satire” meant solely for association members.
“It’s an association newsletter,” he said, adding he didn’t believe what he wrote and that the pieces were meant for entertainment. “It’s not meant to be taken word for word.”
The station reports he had no comment when asked if he regretted his words, but said his columns had “nothing to do with how I conduct myself professionally.”
“I don’t get citizen complaints,” said Pedrini, who is set to become the association’s executive director in January. “I’m bought into the procedural justice and all the ideals the Arlington police stand for.”
In a statement, Arlington Town Manager Adam Chapdelaine said the town is taking the comments “very seriously” and will carry out a thorough investigation.
“I am deeply disturbed by the apparent disregard for human life and for the duty of a police officer shown by Richard Pedrini in the Massachusetts Police Association newsletter,” Chapdelaine said. “These comments do not represent the mission and values of the Arlington Police Department or the Town of Arlington. The sentiment raised by these comments is disturbing.”
Jim Machado, the current executive director of the Massachusetts Police Association, told WBUR he hadn’t read the columns before they were published and that response among members was mixed at a conference last week.
