The U.S. Navy SEALs are suspending all affiliation with the National Navy UDT-SEAL Museum outside Fort Pierce, Fla. after resurfaced 2019 footage showed a military working dog demonstration in which military K-9s attacked a man wearing a Colin Kaepernick jersey as a prop.
Rear Admiral Collin Green, the head of the Naval Special Warfare Command, denounced the videos in an email provided to The Associated Press. Green announced the decision to sever all ties with the private museum, adding “we will revisit our relationship with the Museum when I am convinced that they have made the necessary changes to ensure this type of behavior does not happen again. “
The official Twitter account for the U.S. Navy Seals initially indicated the unit was investigating the incident to make sure no active military members were involved.
https://t.co/c2Rtf9dARW pic.twitter.com/Crgj5r1VtC
— US Navy SEALs (@us_navyseals) August 2, 2020
“We became aware today of a video of a Navy SEAL Museum event posted last year with a military working dog demonstration. In the demonstration, the target is wearing a Colin Kaepernick jersey,” the initial Navy SEAL statement read. “The inherent message of this video is completely inconsistent with the values and ethos of Naval Special Warfare and the U.S. Navy. We are investigating the matter fully, and initial indications are that there were no active-duty Navy personnel or equipment involved with this independent organization’s event.”
In the latest round of comments, Green revealed some of the results of the Navy investigation and confirmed no active members of the U.S. military were involved in the 2019 incident.
“While the museum is an independent non-profit organization and the participants were contracted employees from outside the DoD, in many ways, these facts are irrelevant. We have been inextricably linked to this organization that represents our history,” Green’s letter read. “We may not have contributed to the misperception in this case, but we suffer from it and will not allow it to continue.”
Kaepernick has become a controversial figure in U.S. culture in recent years after he began kneeling during the national anthem before NFL games.
Kaepernick began kneeling during the 2016 NFL season in what he described as a protest against police brutality. He has not played in an NFL game since the 2016 season and in 2017, Kaepernick left the San Francisco 49ers and became a free agent. Kaepernick has since struggled to find a spot on a new NFL team, but did become the face of Nike’s 2018 JustDoIt advertising campaign.
