Company That Released Viral Pro-Police Ad: ‘Stop Vilifying The Whole Based On The Actions Of The Few’

On Friday, Egard Watches released a video to its YouTube channel that highlighted the good in law enforcement despite a climate in which police officers are being broadly labeled as rotten.

The video has subsequently gone viral, with even Fox News taking notice.

After the video went up on Friday, The Daily Wire spoke with Ilan Srulovicz, owner of Egard, about his decision to create the ad, and what his expectations were.

Now, less than two days later, Srulovicz is speaking with us again about the whirlwind that has followed the debut of the video.

DW: How did you think this was going to turn out, and how did your expectations change?

SRULOVICZ: My expectations were one of three possibilities. One was that it would get bombarded by the mob of negativity and that it would potentially destroy my company, and even to some degree make me personally a target since I do the videos myself and am the face of the company.

The second possibility was that it would get lost in the internet, which was fine because at least then I would have gotten how I felt off my chest – it was bottled up inside me and I was feeling censored.

The last possibility was that the mob came after it, but it still had equal positivity from people supporting the message.

The most surprising thing is that the response has been overwhelmingly positive. I know it’s still early, and to be fair, the press covering it has been pro-police, so I still know that the possibility for backlash is very real, and cancel culture has already started peeking its head – but it’s nowhere near what I expected.

I think it’s a sign to others to know that they can speak up for what they believe in. We don’t need to censor ourselves or live in fear of expressing our opinions.

DW: Are you glad you put this video out?

SRULOVICZ: More than anything I’ve ever done. The amount of suffering in the law enforcement community at this time is unprecedented – worse than I realized.

Thousands of police officers and their families have reached out to share what they are going through, how much they are vilified, hated, and even attacked. Even their children are targets. We have turned on our protectors. There’s a large number of officers who feel abandoned, who’s only goal is to go out and help others, and consistently, all of them write in about how saddened and disgusted they were by the killing of George Floyd – all of them.

We have to stop vilifying the whole based on the actions of the few. Our law enforcement needs a lot more than one video. The silence from so many of our politicians, the anti-police rhetoric from all the corporations, the media covering these situations, we need to start holding them responsible. We need to start being as vocal as those who call to abolish the police. They need to know that they are appreciated.

I hope and pray that people who read this or watch the video feel the courage to express their support despite the potential backlash, even if that means seeing a police officer on the street and letting them know they are appreciated. They need to hear it now more than ever.

DW: What have you been seeing since the video dropped?

SRULOVICZ: The support for our company has been overwhelming, which should be a message to other companies that this kind of messaging is not only okay, but necessary, and will be rewarded.

A video humanizing police should not be the exception. I was hoping some other companies would follow suit. That is what I was hoping to see. It’s still early on, so I still believe some may, but so far none have come forward. Some people writing to us are still fearful to express their support publicly or even share the video because they don’t want to risk their jobs, and sadly, it makes sense. People are still being fired daily for the simplest misstep, but I see so many others that have decided to share their support openly and strongly starting to come forward.

Following the death of 46-year-old African American man George Floyd, who was killed after a Minneapolis police officer used his knee to pin Floyd’s neck to the ground for nearly nine minutes, protests have erupted across the nation.

Unfortunately, what began as protests quickly turned sour as riots and looting broke out in cities like Minneapolis, Los Angeles, New York, and elsewhere. Businesses have been destroyed and burned, with GoFundMe accounts popping up in order to help them rebuild.

As the protests have continued, calls to “defund the police” have gained traction among a small but vocal subsection of Americans.

On Monday, House Democrats proposed law enforcement reform legislation called the Justice in Policing Act of 2020.

PBS explains that the bill “would ban police departments from using chokeholds, develop a national standard for use of force, limit the transfer of military weapons to police departments, define lynching as a federal hate crime, establish a national police misconduct registry, and limit qualified immunity, which protects officers from lawsuits over alleged misconduct.”

Republicans are also offering their own reform ideas, led by Senator Tim Scott (R-SC).

CNN obtained a copy of Scott’s JUSTICE Act draft, which would, among other things, require law enforcement officers to “wear body cameras during arrest and detentions,” provide penalties to “states that fail to enact policies penalizing failure to use issued body-worn cameras,” and “grant funding tied to required training on alternatives to uses of force and de-escalation tactics.”

RELATED: Watch Company Releases Powerful Pro-Police Ad Amid Anti-Police Climate

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