“Your’s truly” O.J. Simpson tweeted out a message in support of the West Hollywood Sheriff’s department, after the municipality’s city council voted to re-allocate funds.
Considering Simpson’s high profile legal trouble, in particular his defense in his double murder trial in the slayings of his ex-wife Nicole Brown-Simpson and her friend Ron Goldman, this is a strange rant by the Pro Football Hall of Famer.
“I see in Los Angeles they voted to defund the sheriff’s department,” Simpson said. “I think that’s all wrong. I spent a little time in one of our institutions and trust me, we need police. We need the sheriff’s department. I always say that they should just redirect some of those funds to better training and expanding internal affairs. But defunding the police as a whole, or the Sheriff’s Department as a whole? No.”
Trust me. We need them! pic.twitter.com/uXpqHLFWBR
— O.J. Simpson (@TheRealOJ32) June 29, 2022
In the 1995 double murder trial, Simpson’s legal defense team led by the late Johnnie Cochran and composed of Robert Shapiro, the late F. Lee Bailey, Alan Dershowitz, the late Robert Kardashian, Shawn Holley, Carl E. Douglas, and Gerald Uelmen centered their strategy on the misdeeds of the Los Angeles Police Department and the perception that the police department engages in racist behavior toward Black people.
To see Simpson go on a full-fledged support the police rant is bizarre, but all of his public behavior since 1994 beginning with the infamous Ford Bronco chase in 1994 has been bizarre.
After his acquittal in 1995, Simpson was held liable for the deaths of Brown-Simpson and Goldman in civil court and ordered to pay a judgment of $33.5 million. Goldman’s father Fred, continues to pursue Simpson for what the judgment. Simpson continued to have run-ins with the law as a Florida resident in the early 2000s.
In 2008, then a resident of Las Vegas, Simpson was convicted on 10 charges, including armed robbery and kidnapping relating to some of his football memorabilia. He served nine years in Nevada state prison and was granted parole in 2017. As of December 14, 2021 he is no longer on parole.
Simpson joined Twitter in June of 2019 and has over 891,000 followers. He regularly posts videos with his musings on sports, current events or what’s going on in his life at the moment.
His rant on Wednesday also veered into his thoughts about the January 6th hearings related to the insurrection on the capital in 2021 in an attempt by then President Donald Trump to overturn the 2020 presidential election.
For a man that has been in the spotlight for all the wrong reasons the last 28 years, you’d think he’d want to keep a low profile. Not this guy.
At the time of the writing of this article, Simpson posted another video (Thursday) addressing the contradiction on his anti-defund the police stance and his criminal defense in 1995.
“My defense was about bad policemen,” Simpson said. “Not policing.”
It’s not about policing, it’s about bad policeman. pic.twitter.com/UYiScvCJqL
— O.J. Simpson (@TheRealOJ32) June 30, 2022
Maybe Simpson is auditioning for a gig on a media platform. Crazier things have happened. Would it surprise anyone if he was hired by some alternative or new media platform to give his takes?
Regardless of whether you think he’s a murderer, innocent, an abhorrent human being or whatever. He’s a famous person with notoriety. That will always generate interest in this depraved society.
