War On Police

LATEST: Alien Gear Holsters Responds After Bashing Police, Blocking Blue Lives Matter

By Officer Blue On July 27, 2017 87

Alien Gear Holsters responded after their Thursday morning criticism of officers in a gunfight.

Alien Gear Holsters Responds After Anti-Police Post

On Thursday morning, the Alien Gear Holsters’ Facebook page made a post bashing police officers who were engaged in a gunfight with Antoquan Watson.

After we reported the incident, Blue Lives Matter followed the Alien Gear Holster Twitter account and was subsequently blocked by the company. They have now unblocked our account and posted an update.

In the initial post to Facebook which started this all, Alien Gear Holsters said:

“A reasonable and prudent person follows a police officer’s orders; Angry people sometimes show reluctance, but is it ever okay to shoot someone 45 times?”

The question is clearly rhetorical.

They then posted a clip of the shooting video.

After getting hammered with criticism for almost 2 hours from pissed-off customers, Alien Gear Holsters deleted their comment and replaced it with a meme with no further comment, as if they were trying to pretend that their previous comment never happened:

Of course, the internet remembers:

Blue Lives Matter’s Twitter account followed Alien Gear Holster’s Twitter and was subsequently blocked.

The company took a beating on social media over the next couple of hours before they posted an initial update which said that they were sorry that people felt that a post criticizing officers who were in a fight for their lives was somehow anti-police. They didn’t apologize for what they said, they apologized for how people felt about it.

A couple of hours later, it appears that the CEO recognized the actual issues and issued what appears to be sincere apology, saying:

“Earlier today an employee made a post asking if it was ever ok for a police officer to shoot someone 45 times.

I am very sorry to all those offended by our post. Furthermore, I am sorry for the non-apology that was issued shortly thereafter.

I haven’t seen the video and have no opinion on the matter. It was one employee’s opinion framed as a rhetorical question and is not an opinion shared by me or this company. She is new here and it’s my fault that we didn’t spend more time training her on the difference between her opinions and those of our company.

Thomas Tedder, CEO”

I, for one, can personally appreciate what appears to be a genuine apology. Alien Gear Holsters has now un-blocked Blue Lives Matter (but didn’t tell us as far as I can see.)

If this was a mistake by one lone employee, it certainly escalated with the poor response prior to the message from the CEO.

Unfortunately for them, it appears that they may have used the poor employee’s advice again when making the final update. The company edited their initial apology and replaced it with the message from the CEO, rather than making a new post, which is an awful idea because they left all of the criticism of the non-apology in place and failed to notify people on Facebook of an update.

I am personally not going to boycott Alien Gear Holsters, and I believe that they just have an employee who is incompetent at PR on social media. Blue Lives Matter has only ever called for one boycott, and that was for Ben & Jerry’s after they decided to take a company position against police.

How you spend your money is your choice, but you now have what appears to be a sincere apology from the CEO to consider. Is this incident going to affect if you spend your money with the Alien Gear Holsters? Please let us know in the comments.

UPDATE: After writing this article, Alien Gear Holsters has decided to be dishonest with people about what happened. UPDATE HERE.

You can see the information on the Antoquan Watson shooting HERE.