During a Democrat-only hearing on Thursday with NFL players about improving relations with police, Georgia Congressman Hank Johnson accused security personnel at Walter Reed National Military Medical Center of racism.
He said, “The issue of relations between the police and African-Americans is something that we as African-Americans have to live with every day.”
During an opening statement, Johnson recounted an incident he said happened in early March.
Johnson contends he was “going into the gate and I had my suit on, gray hair, rushing for an appointment, looking distinguished and everything as I always do.
“I had a little incident at the gate with a 20 — that guy’s probably about 23 years old. A hot firecracker in terms of how he wanted to talk to me and how he approached me in a threatening way in a threatening voice,” Johnson said.
“If this guy had been a civilian because he was a military MP (police), if he had been a civilian and it had been under other circumstances like it was dark and we were off somewhere by ourselves and he had the gun and I did not, it would have been an explosive situation,” he said.
Speaking in the context of being black, Johnson said “even I as a congressman, you know, going to a military facility, have to deal with.”
Johnson said he’s seeking a resolution to the incident, but has not been successful.
“Same guy was out there last week, same guy in the same location, doing the work that he really is not psychologically equipped to do,” he said.
Johnson concluded, “We have to go extra to make sure that we protect ourselves from these threats that are always looming.”
Sandy B. Dean, Public Affairs Officer for Walter Reed, tells The American Mirror she forward our media request onto “the PAO at Naval Support Activity Bethesda.”
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