Philadelphia Court Supervisor Fired After Saying That Black Lives Don’t Matter To Him

Michael Henkel, a 61-year old man who worked as a Family Court super­vi­sor in Philadelphia, has been fired from his job after being caught on cam­era caus­ing a dis­tur­bance dur­ing a peace­ful Black Lives Matter protest. He was seen destroy­ing posters and even curs­ing and shout­ing that he doesn’t care about Black lives.
Last Friday, posters with Black Lives Matter mes­sages were put up on a fence in the park as part of a child-friend­ly protest march orga­nized by com­mu­ni­ty leaders.

Henkel, who had worked for Philadelphia’s First Judicial District, report­ed­ly went and took down the signs. A 34-sec­ond video clip showed Henkel doing so while a woman was heard telling him that the signs are not his prop­er­ty. “I know. It’s the city. I pay for this… Yeah, my tax­es pay for this place, yep,” Henkel respond­ed. “So I can do what­ev­er I want… I’m always around here, too.” The woman respond­ed say­ing, “Great. I live right here. Black Lives Matter!” to which Henkel replied, “Not to me, they don’t.” The woman post­ed the video on Facebook on Sunday, imme­di­ate­ly spark­ing out­rage against Henkel. It was blocked from pub­lic view the next day but was post­ed by anoth­er per­son on Instagram.

Moreover, local activist Leslie Chapman expressed dis­ap­point­ment on Henkel, say­ing, “For that adult to take that away from chil­dren, it’s just real­ly awful. The kids prob­a­bly had a lot of fun mak­ing those signs,” accord­ing to The Philadelphia Inquirer. Meanwhile, it has been con­firmed that Henkel “is no longer an employ­ee,” said Family Court spokesper­son Marty O’Rourke since he made mul­ti­ple vio­la­tions of the state court system’s Code of Conduct. “The Court takes the inci­dent very seri­ous­ly and believes Mr. Henkel’s behav­ior as shown in the video is egre­gious and total­ly unac­cept­able for an employ­ee of the Courts,” he said.