A Phoenix-area police official was fired last week after videos showed him appearing intent on stoking violence while off duty at a high school rally against U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement.
The story of Dusten Mullen, who had served as a sergeant for the Chandler Police Department, pairs well with other stories of MAGA provocateurs at ICE protests. According to KNXV-TV in Phoenix:
Last month, body camera video showed tense moments as off-duty Sergeant Dusten Mullen told a Chandler police officer he was at the protest with a goal to get kids in jail if they wanted to break the law.
“My plan is legitimately to just let them all assault me, and you guys arrest them all,” Mullen could be heard saying, “ I will keep it on film. I also have other people filming from a distance, so my goal would be to get all these kids in jail if they want to break the law.”
Mullen was placed on administrative leave in April as the Phoenix Police Department investigated Mullen’s involvement in the protest, which escalated to the arrest of one teenager.
A Chandler police report says that Mullen confronted students and was asked to move to avoid further escalation.
You can watch footage of Mullen talking about trying to get protesters to assault him here. His lawyer told KNXV-TV that he would challenge the decision in court, saying the internal investigation wasn’t “thorough and fair” and that Mullen was disappointed yet unsurprised by his firing.
The news makes things a bit awkward for a MAGA movement that has pushed narratives about liberals sowing chaos and stoking violence at protests. Earlier this year, Media Matters for America reported on the trend of conservative influencers attempting to cast aspersions on anti-ICE protests by promoting baseless claims about liberal “agitators.”
But such actual behavior seems to keeps happening among conservatives.
For example, there’s Jake Lang, a Jan. 6 insurrectionist who was pardoned by President Donald Trump. His game is literally agitation, and he garnered attention in Minneapolis in January when he was chased away by counterprotesters who opposed his efforts to hold a racist, xenophobic rally decrying Somali people and Muslims, as well as his plans to burn a Quran.
And let’s not forget the story of the right-wing provocateur who goes by Zak X — an associate of Lang’s who was charged with fifth-degree assault in Minneapolis late last year after allegedly punching a man in the head at an anti-ICE rally. The county prosecutor said the alleged crime amounted to “assaulting a protester whose views he disagreed with.”
X, who changed his name from Zachary Stumpf, has said the act was self-defense. (You can watch a video of the encounter here.)
All of this seems like ample reason for Americans to question the narratives about liberal “agitators” looking for trouble at protests.
Ja’han Jones is an MS NOW opinion blogger. He previously wrote The ReidOut Blog.