Both disdain, support for hospital exec’s remark about cops shooting black children – NJ.com

An executive at one of the state’s largest health care systems was placed on administrative leave Thursday after making a statement on Facebook about police shooting black children.

Michellene Davis, an executive vice president and chief corporate affairs officer for RWJ Barnabas, will remain on leave “pending the completion of an investigation,” hospital spokeswoman Ellen Greene said Thursday afternoon. 

Davis, using her personal Facebook account, which has since been deleted, commented on a post from NorthJersey.com about Fair Lawn hiring armed officers to patrol elementary and middle schools in the borough’s school district. 

“Who is going to train them not to shoot black children first?” Davis commented. The comment appeared in a private post, but screenshots were circulated on social media.

The Fair Lawn PBA Local 67, the union that represents officers in the borough, called the initial comment “disgusting.”

“We are held to the highest standards and pride ourselves in our professionalism and our love for our community, especially our schools and children,” Luis Vasquez, the local’s president, wrote in a Facebook post. “Michellene Davis is also a professional and is held to those same standards as every civilized human being should be. An apology was issued and it is a step in a positive direction.”

Eugene O’Donnell, a former NYPD officer and a prosecutor in Brooklyn and Queens, felt the comment missed the point.

But O’Donnell, who now teaches at John Jay College of Criminal Justice, said Davis shouldn’t have been punished. “I would defend her right to say whatever she wants to say,” he said.

“If she was the only person who thought this, that would be one thing, but sadly she is expressing a mainstream opinion that is disconnected from reality.”

He argued that the bigger issue was gun violence in communities.

“She at a health care institution should know,” O’Donnell said, “That many of the people being brought into hospitals in New Jersey with gunshot wounds are not wounded by police officers.”

“Very little of the lethal gun violence in New Jersey is caused by the police,” he added later.

“It’s scary and revealing how posts made valuing Black life can be both offensive and violate a company’s policies,” said Black Lives Matter activist, Zellie Imani.