Biden and Harris ‘stand with criminals,’ retired Vegas cop tells RNC crowd
LAS VEGAS — Retired Las Vegas Metropolitan Police Department Lt. Randy Sutton — the most decorated cop in the department’s history — told the Republican National Convention that President Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris “stand with criminals” in a “battle for the soul of America.”
Addressing the convention and saluting Donald Trump, who survived a would-be assassin’s bullet on Saturday, was a unique moment, he told The Post via phone Tuesday night from Milwaukee.
“I’ve never had an experience like it,” said Sutton.
Although the former lawman is an experienced public speaker, he said, “I have never in in my wildest imagination, could have felt what it was like to be up at this stage, addressing not only the massive crowd that was in the audience, but also knowing that millions of people, tens of thousands of American law enforcement officers were watching and knowing that I had a sacred duty to address this nation and tell them the words that I said.”
He said that while he wanted to adjust his remarks in light of the attempt on Trump’s life, the RNC asked him to stick to his original remarks, and he did.
Sutton, who had 34 years on the police force, said criminals most fear “the once and future President of the United States,” at which point Trump stood in approval of the comment.
The retired Las Vegas cop said that “To lift my hand in salute to him was something that I will remember for the rest of my life.”
Sutton is now president of The Wounded Blue, an organization that works to help injured officers seek and get needed assistance.
He said the group “is a resource for every single police officer in America, and we live by this motto, ‘never forgotten, never alone.’”
He said he is publishing a book this fall, “Rescuing 911: The Fight for America’s Safety,” that deals with some of the current issues faced by law enforcement.
“We’re experiencing a plague of crime across America, the endless tsunami of illegal aliens, no consequences for violent crime, the abuse of our criminal justice system — it has all made America more dangerous than ever before,” he told the convention audience.
“If the radical left succeeds in defunding and destroying policing as we know it, they will break apart the cornerstone of our system, law and order,” he said.
Sutton told The Post that Trump exhibited the same kind of courage that officers wounded in the line of duty display.
“The courage that it took for President Trump, seconds after he was shot, with blood pouring from that injury, to stand up and raise his fist in what I can only say is an act of defiance against those that would harm him, was truly a moment that I will never forget.”
