HOME / NEWS / HUMAN INTEREST

Video of military dogs attacking man in Kaepernick jersey for not standing during anthem sparks Navy probe

The incident from a SEAL musuem fundraiser had first begun making the rounds in January 2019 but resurfaced recently on Twitter

The Navy SEALs confirmed on Sunday, August 2, that they were investigating a video that showed military dogs attacking a man wearing a Colin Kaepernick jersey during a demonstration at a SEAL museum fundraiser. The video was first posted on Instagram in January 2019 but resurfaced once again on Twitter, where it was uploaded by a user named Billy Corben and has already been viewed more than five million times. "Navy SEAL Museum in Fort Pierce used “Colin Kaepernick stand-in" for K-9 demonstration at fundraiser last year #BecauseFlorida," he wrote in the caption.

"Colin Kaepernick stand in Josh gets attacked by 5 Navy SEAL dogs for not standing during the National Anthem at a Navy SEAL Museum fundraiser," a posting next to the video read.

The video starts with a military dog being released and directed to attack a man wearing a red Colin Kaepernick jersey. As the dog latches on, the person filming can be heard providing commentary on the event and describing the attack. A few seconds into the video, a second dog, who is supposedly the "oldest dog in the field," is directed to attack the man as well, with a third and a fourth dog joining the melee by the end. In a second video, which has been viewed around 500,000 times, the scene depicts what happens after the Navy SEALs and NAVY SEAL dogs took down 'Colin Kaepernick' for not standing during the National Anthem. 

He can be seen lying on the ground after the 'attack' as two SEALs walk up to him with their weapons drawn and roll him over on his stomach. As the dogs continue barking at him, he can be heard exclaiming, "Oh, man! I will stand!"

In a statement, the Navy acknowledged it had been made aware of the video recently and that its "inherent message" was against everything that they strived to represent. "We became aware of a video of a Navy SEAL Museum event posted last year with a military working dog demonstration," they said. "In the demonstration, the target is wearing a Colin Kaepernick jersey. The inherent message of this video is completely inconsistent with the values and ethos of Naval Special Warfare and the U.S. Navy... There were no active duty Navy personnel or equipment involved with this independent organization's event."

Kaepernick, an NFL quarterback who formerly played for the San Francisco 49ers, has not found a team since 2017, when he first started protesting against police brutality and racial inequality in the United States by kneeling during the national anthem. The protest was a highly controversial one, with President Donald Trump weighing in on the issue by stating that NFL owners should "fire" players who took part in the protest.

However, the gesture has since come to be adopted by the Black Lives Matter movement and has been widely used around the country as a gesture of solidarity following the Memorial Day death of George Floyd.

Floyd, a 46-year-old truck driver, had died in the custody of four Minneapolis Police officers after he was apprehended for using a counterfeit bill to purchase a pack of cigarettes. In a heartbreaking video that has since been viewed hundreds of millions of times around the world, officer Derek Chauvin could be seen kneeling on Floyd's neck for nine minutes even as he begged and pleaded for his life and gasped, "I can't breathe."