Who is Nate Silvester? Idaho cop who mocked LeBron James on TikTok defended Kim Potter in Daunte Wright killing
Nate Silvester, an officer with the Marshal's Office in Bellevue, Idaho, who mocked basketball legend LeBron James in a viral TikTok video, has also supported Kim Potter, the former Brooklyn Center veteran police officer who is charged with second-degree manslaughter over the shooting death of 20-year-old Daunte Wright.
In a TikTok video posted last week, Silvester defended Potter after a commenter made fun of her on one of the cop's TikTok videos, which showed the cop orchestrating a prank on his coworkers involving a taser. The commenter joked, saying, "At least he knows the difference between a Glock and a taser," alluding to the debates over whether Potter had mistakenly grabbed her gun instead of her taser before she shot Wright. Silvester's response came in two parts as he claimed that he has been "getting lots of these comments lately" from people he assumed had "never worn a uniform."
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Potter 'had the balls to wear the badge and do the job for 26 years'
"Yeah, the female officer in the Daunte Wright incident f***ed up big time, she made a huge mistake, it's awful, it's horrible, but at least she had the b**ls to wear the badge and do the job for 26 years in an area like Minneapolis," he said. He also went on to imagine "the amount of good" Potter had done in her 26 years on the force. "Endless crimes that have been prevented probably saved a few lives even," he said. "But none of that stuff matters now. It's all being disregarded because of this one mistake, and her life has changed forever."
In his second video, Silvester said: "Your response to my comment at the end of the part one of this is 'Well, resisting arrest doesn't warrant a death sentence.' No s**t. No one ever said it did. But when you fight with the cops and escalate an already tense situation, bad things can happen. You see, the suspect chooses how the encounter goes. Either he can choose to cooperate or he can choose to fight. And if he chooses the fight, what do you think the likely outcome is?"
He added, use of excessive force by law enforcement "happens very rarely, contrary to what CNN would have you believe." "But you don't have the right to resist arrest," he said. "And the police are not required to stand down so that you can safely resist arrest and make it home unscathed. Stop fighting the cops on the street and have your day in court."
MAGA cop
According to Newsweek, an Instagram account that appears to belong to Silvester features a number of memes that were in support of former President Donald Trump. In one of the videos, reposted on the account, there was footage of people lying down on a street, with the caption "Protesters laying in the road." The clip cuts to a group of men in a car that bumps violently, insinuating that it was driving over the protesters. "Me and the boys on our way to the Trump rally," the caption said.
In the video, people were seen lying face-down with their hands behind their backs, which was a posture similar to the one taken by Black Lives Matter protesters who peacefully protested George Floyd's killing by emulating his final moments under the knee of former Minneapolis police officer Derek Chauvin.
Nate Silvester's viral TikTok video mocking Lebron James
His viral TikTok video posted Sunday, April 25, has been viewed around 2.5 million times. The video begins with Silvester arriving at a scene and calling dispatch. "Dispatch, I've arrived at that disturbance. Will you have LeBron call my cellphone right away, please? Thank you," Silvester says. The officer, from inside his car, speaks to unseen people outside his window and asks a person to "put down a knife." He then tells them to hold on, James is calling his phone. "LeBron, hey, yeah it's me again," Silvester says. "Listen, I'm out here at this disturbance call and there's a guy trying to stab another guy with a knife. What do you think I should do?"
Silvester then asks "Why does that matter?", adding after a bit, "Okay, well, they're both Black. One guy is trying to stab another guy with a knife. Deadly force is completely justified." Silvester pauses and then says, "So, you don't care if a Black person kills another Black person -- but you do care if a White cop kills a Black person, even if he's doing it to save the life of another Black person? I mean, that doesn't make a whole lot of sense, but then again, you're really good at basketball so I guess I'll take your word for it."
The video was posted amid backlash over a now-deleted tweet by James after 16-year-old Ma'Khia Bryant, a Black girl, was shot dead by a White police officer on April 20 in Columbus, Ohio. Last week, James shared a photo of Nicholas Reardon, the officer who carried out the shooting, with the tweet "YOU'RE NEXT #ACCOUNTABILITY" and an hourglass emoji. James subsequently deleted his tweet, as critics accused him of encouraging violence on social media.