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“Just don’t treat them worse than the average person.” —Thomas Kenniff, on equal treatment for police officers
Chats with law enforcement experts and leaders
Hi, this is Sergeant Betsy Brantner Smith with the National Police Association, and this is the National Police Association Podcast. I have a really fascinating guest today, and there's so much to talk about with this guy. He's a veteran, he's an author, he's been on both sides of the legal process, he's been a prosecutor, he's a defense attorney, and that's one of the things I really want to talk to him about today because I've heard him talk about this several times, how everyone in the justice system deserves the most rigorous defense. And I think sometimes we get away from that because we are such a polarized society now. We think only my side should get the good representation, whichever side that is.
Betsy Smith:So we're going to talk about all those things as well as a police officer who the National Police Association is trying to bring attention to his case because as we are seeing around this country, police officers are being prosecuted for things that not only should they not be being prosecuted for, but in many cases they should be being commended for, for doing the job of the American law enforcement officer. So Tom Kenniff, welcome to the show. We're so grateful to have you.
Thomas Kenniff:Oh, it's great to be here, Betsy. Thanks for that lead in.
Betsy Smith:So first and foremost, before we talk about what you're doing right now, you really come from a family of service and you have a heart for service, you know, starting with the army. Talk about that.
Thomas Kenniff:Yeah. No. Absolutely. You know, I I thought for a moment that, you know, I might be the first one in my, you know, paternal line not to join the military. Obviously, you know, military service has become less common than it was in the days of my father's generation, or if he was still alive, would be in his late eighties.
Thomas Kenniff:You know, my grandfather's generation, the World War two generation, and so forth. And, you know, I always appreciated it. I always said, you know, that would be interesting, you know, but, you know, kind of, you know, went on the college path, and I thought that was it. But then, you know, I was in New York City during nineeleven. I had also, you know, in the aftermath of nineeleven, I just it was just one of those moments that no matter where you were in life, you kind of reflected.
Thomas Kenniff:I was a young man, but I've been working a couple of years. I got, you know, I was fortunate enough to get hired at a huge, gigantic, you know, corporate Midtown law firm in Manhattan after law school. And I did a couple of years there. You know, it was great people. It was, but you know, my heart wasn't in it.
Thomas Kenniff:I always thought of, you know, law would be trial law, right? So you know, I just made a decision that, look, you know, I'm young enough now, if I don't do it, I'll be looking back. And I sprayed, you know, the local district attorney's offices with resumes in New York. We have several, one for each borough, whether it's Brooklyn, Bronx. And we also have Westchester and Long Island.
Thomas Kenniff:I wound up, you know, just moving through the process, and next thing you know, was sitting across from Janine Piro, and she was making me an offer. So I went from, you know, big corporate law to public service. And while at the District Attorney's Office, you know, my first position, we all had to share an office. It's government work, you know, you don't get some big fancy office your first year. And my current law partner, Steve Racer, was my office mate.
Thomas Kenniff:I said to him off the cuff, you know, I said, look, you know, does JAG does the military have any sort of reserve positions, you know, for people who want to go in with for lawyers who want to go in with the JAG as their MOS? And he said, know, you finally asked that, here's my recruiter's card. And it just went from there. And then, you know, within a matter of months, I was taking the oath. I was being told that you're almost guaranteed to get deployed to Iraq and Afghanistan once you take the oath.
Thomas Kenniff:I kind of believed it, but then part of me was like, ah, maybe they just say that to everyone, you know? Oh, sure enough, you know, I get through basic training and I get back and there's a letter waiting for me. So, you know, that's, you know, how it kinda came to pass. And, you know, in addition to the military component, you know, I do have my sister and my brother-in-law, both retired deputy inspectors over the NYPD. So I have a great appreciation, obviously, for military as well as for police.
Thomas Kenniff:It's dear to my heart. That's why I represent a lot of police officers.
Betsy Smith:So I gotta jump back. You talked about taking your first job as a prosecutor, not your first job, but working with Jeanine Pirro. Now people know her now because she's part of the Trump administration, or was appointed by President Trump to the District Of Columbia. What was that like to be under her wing, to be working for her?
Thomas Kenniff:Yeah, I mean, life changing. I mean, Janine is like a mom to me. And she is just really amazing because the thing is, and you notice, like even the media can't, they, you know, they love to take her down, take down anybody associated with the Trump administration. But I feel like even the media knows to lay off a bit because they, because there's just no denying, there's no debating even among her enemies, you know, what a competent, I mean competence putting it much too lightly, just a brilliant person she is. I mean, she knows her cases.
Thomas Kenniff:She knows her stuff inside and out. And that's so rare these days, right? You know, the world is full. The internet is full. The social media is full.
Thomas Kenniff:The people with a big bluster, you know, they have the look, they have the talk, they have, you know, the rarest commodity is to find someone like that that actually has the substance to back it up. Janine does. You know, she's not only telegenic, she's not only a gifted speaker, she's not only, you know, all that, but there was, you know, being in that office, I mean, you know, she had her enemies, and there's no question about that. And Janine, you know, if you're on a good side, it's great, but you wanna be on the wrong side of Janine Piro, let me tell you that. So she had people that wore and people had no use for her or, you know, were
Betsy Smith:and I
Thomas Kenniff:None of those people would ever say that she wasn't, you know, they would say, you know, they'd have other issues with her, you know, she's Right. The spotlight, she's this, she's It would never be, oh, she got there because of her looks or never.
Betsy Smith:Oh no, and she is undeniably brilliant.
Thomas Kenniff:Undeniably.
Betsy Smith:And you combine all that with her, again, she's like you and I'm assuming part of this comes from working for her, that undeniable passion for the constitution and for the American legal system. I mean, of all people, when you went to Iraq, you saw what a legal system looks like where you don't have good representation, you don't have a constitution, everything that Americans enjoy and I think take for granted. And that's one of the things I obviously you share with her is that love of our justice system and that belief that everyone deserves a fair shot in the American justice system, right?
Thomas Kenniff:Yeah, no, absolutely. And I tell people, you know, all the time, look, I'm a law and order, you know, my reputation has been someone who believes in law and order, and I do. You know, and some people, you know, well, isn't there a contradiction? You're a defense attorney. I said, no, absolutely not.
Thomas Kenniff:You know, you can't, it's an adversarial system, yes, but you need both sides. And, you know, I talked before, look, love police officers. I love, you know, I love what police stand for. They stand for good, right? We see a lot in today's society where the good is being cast as evil and evil is being cast as good.
Thomas Kenniff:It's an upside down world. You know, but having said that, you know, you can't have anytime you have a group, I don't care if you have a group of, you know, 30,000, you know, bishops, you know, from the church or rabbis or, you know, what have statistically you're guaranteed to have some bad apples. It's just that we're human, right? So, you know, there needs to be a check and balance on that. I think one of the greatest checks and balances is, one, defense attorneys, you know, and two, the jury system.
Thomas Kenniff:Thank God that our founding fathers enshrine that in our Constitution. I think it's arguably the single best bulwark against tyranny. So, you know, yeah, I mean, you know, where this all comes together as is what we, you know, the terminology you're using, justice. You know, justice is not how many people I can put in jail for how long a period of time. It's a fair system that acts reasonably, proportionately, and doesn't weaponize itself against one specific group of people because that's what the politics, you know, the time or the mood of the time call for.
Betsy Smith:So you believe in the system so much that you decided to run for District Attorney at one point. Talk about that really briefly because I think that is such a, we need more talented attorneys to run for office quite frankly. And I think a lot of people don't even understand. And again, this varies state to state, region to region, that most of our county or our borough or our city prosecutors, they're elected. And that's one of the ways that the left is chipping away at our
Thomas Kenniff:justice Absolutely. So tough. I mean, is exactly what's going on. And a lot of it is we have a lot of people are just checked out on politics, you know. And look, that's their right.
Thomas Kenniff:I mean, you're not, you know, voting for civic duty and all that. But, you know, not everyone is captivated by the political arena. They're jaded with it or they're just disconnected. You know, hey, that's democracy in America, I suppose. But the tactics of the extreme left, of the Soros crowd and so forth, it's particularly effective because maybe someone who's not even particularly interested in politics, you know, they probably know who's running for mayor in New York City.
Thomas Kenniff:You know, they probably know who's running for governor of the state. They certainly know presidential who candidates are. You know, maybe they're senators. But, you know, when you start getting down to the district attorney's office, there is a lot of people that really, you know, don't, not only do not know who their district attorney is, they really don't have a good concept of what a district attorney does. You know, some place they're called state's attorneys.
Thomas Kenniff:You know, that term obviously hits, you know, very close to home given how the worlds we live in, you know, whether you're a police officer, attorney, and so forth. But, you know, a lot of average people are just like, So you know, you're someone like George Soros and you want to disrupt our society, if you want to create chaos and create the disruption in law and order because you think American society is inherently unjust, what a better place to target? Because I defy anyone. Go back thousands of years of recorded history. Show me a society that has endured the breakdown of law and order.
Thomas Kenniff:It does not exist.
Betsy Smith:Right, absolutely. And when you look at I mean, know, Cully Stinson's book, Rogue Prosecutors, really explains, and it started in Cook County, Illinois with Kim Fox and how you can change a county, a state, a society just by getting involved in, like George Soros did, with money and the election system in the prosecutor's office and then the county board and then the school board and and all of those things. So what was it like running for office when you when you decided to jump off that?
Thomas Kenniff:Well, I mean, to be honest with you, I mean, was frustrating in the sense that the lack of institutional support. Where I was running in Manhattan, you know, again, it's a borough race because New York City has the five boroughs. So, you know, Brooklyn has their own DA, Bronx has their own DA. People tend to know the Manhattan DA because it's the most prolific of the offices. You The Manhattan Republican Party, they're good people, they mean well and so forth, but they just don't have the institutional support to give perhaps.
Thomas Kenniff:And when you try to get donor interests, when you try to get media interests, people, especially the big donors, the big media, they inherently handicap the race and they say, well look, know, Democrats outnumber Republicans in registration nine to one, you know, Republican doesn't have a chance, so we're gonna put our money somewhere else, we're gonna put our news articles somewhere else. And that's what you're up against. I knew that going in, I didn't necessarily know it was gonna be so bad. But you know, having said that, it was a great experience for me. You know, we able, I think, to accomplish a lot of things.
Thomas Kenniff:I mean, people even now are asking me, you know, routinely ask me, in fact, Monday in Manhattan at the New York National Woman's Republican Club, the National Woman's Republican Club, you know, I spoke at one of their, you know, most prestigious meetings that they have every month. And, you know, I called attention to what was sadly awaiting voters in New York. It wasn't enough to stop it, but I do believe that it changed the narrative or impacted the narrative. You know, the other thing was I was able to see, I mean, you know, I really took it very seriously even though I knew it a long shot at best. I went out and campaigned almost every day.
Thomas Kenniff:And, you know, the reception that you get on the street level, you know, including areas where one would think, you know, Republicans would be, you know, ostracized, Harlem. You know, it was incredibly positive reception and overwhelmingly positive. And, you know, it opened my eyes to the, you know, reality that in the cities across the country, certainly in New York, and I doubt Chicago is any exception, it's not that the local population wants this. It's that the elections are controlled and participation in the elections is overwhelmingly coming from a small minority, and I don't mean minority in terms of race and all that, minority of voters that are, you know, vested, that are, you know, cajoled, that are puppeteered, you know, whether it's the city employees, the public sector union members, the party stalwarts. And you know, other, a lot of the people who might be a counterweight against that simply just don't participate, maybe because they think that it's, you know, there's no chance.
Thomas Kenniff:So it's, I guess that's sad in some way, but in the other way, you know, you realize that look, there is a lot of common sense out there and there is opportunity. Somehow it's got to rise to the surface.
Betsy Smith:Yeah, I mean, I think we hope it will eventually. Polling tells us most people love their cops. Most people want more police officers in their neighborhoods. Most people want a local prosecutor who is going to put bad guys in jail. Yet the politics of all that don't, for some reason, just start Right, it doesn't
Thomas Kenniff:translate Don't even
Betsy Smith:match, right? I Right,
Thomas Kenniff:have my theories why, but I'm not a political strategist.
Betsy Smith:Don't we all.
Thomas Kenniff:Everything you're saying, Betsy, is so true because I mean, to tell you, you know, in reality is I got my best receptions in, you know, the more minority areas that were, you know, some of the, know, a lot of the more socio, you know, the economically less affluent areas, you know, because Manhattan has a lot of very affluent areas and neighborhoods. And, you know, I know why that is, because those are the places that are most negatively affected by the chaos that, you know, the progressive, I call it regressive, criminal justice reforms impact. You know, if you're living on, you know, on Billionaires Row on Central Park South, you know, chances are that whether crime's up or crime's down, you're going to be you're going to feel okay. Know, your life's not going to be torn upside down unless, you know, it's just some real unfortunate luck. But you know, when you're living day to day in a place where it's a struggle to begin with, and then we're emptying the prisons or emasculating the police so that they're afraid to do anything and, you know, to go after those quality of life offenses, to look for crime and seek it out as opposed to maybe just trying to turn a blind eye, not because they don't want to do their job because they're afraid of the consequence of doing their job, you know, that's where it hits closest to home.
Betsy Smith:Well, And that brings us to Omar Habib. You are, you know, he was a member of the NYPD and he was arrested and prosecuted under this obscure policy and law stemming from 2020 and the George Floyd situation, no choke holds, no chest compressions, no back compressions, all these things. Talk about Omar Habib. He's a police officer that the National Police Association is asking the Department of Justice to look at his case, which is now in appeal. Talk about how you came Yeah, to be involved in his
Thomas Kenniff:well, know, truth is, you know, Omar Habib was a New York City police officer, or he should still be a New York City police officer. You know, I only very recently came to Omar's case. Wish I was there from the get go. He and his family had hired an attorney and, you know, great guy and, you know, difficult to defend a police officer in Bronx County, period. Which is why I think that the Bronx DA's office goes after police officers because they can.
Thomas Kenniff:They know the juries are gonna, you know, be sympathetic to these prosecutions no matter how frail they are. And yeah, the case went to trial in August. He was convicted. I was recently brought in to handle the sentencing and the appeal that we anticipate will follow. But if you don't know much about the case, he was prosecuted under this law that the city council passed around 2020, you know, in the George Floyd hysteria where, you know, they codified a statute that made it a misdemeanor for a police officer to apply any pressure to any perp's neck.
Thomas Kenniff:At the time, every reasonable person knew this was crazy. I think the posture of the police unions were, no one's ever gonna be prosecuted under this, don't worry about it. Well, here we are. Omar Harvey unfortunately was a test case. The facts of the case, I'll give you just viewers or listeners a little taste of it.
Thomas Kenniff:I mean, first of all, no one was hurt here. Officer Habib and his fellow officers responded to scenes of a catering event hall in the Bronx where the perpetrator was, first of all, highly intoxicated. He got into a brawl, got into fights with other party guests. In the aftermath of that, he went into the men's room and then with his bare hands punched out all the mirrors in the men's room. So the catering hall owners obviously called the police.
Thomas Kenniff:The individual's hands were bleeding from the cuts he sustained. So his injuries were all self inflicted. He's in the back of an ambulance. And by the way, he's a big guy. He's a big, big, big guy.
Thomas Kenniff:And he's belligerent, he's combative, he's resisting when they try to handcuff him in the process of they're also trying to treat him. And you know, if you accept the DA's case, you know, Officer Habib, who's trying to subdue this individual with several other police officers, has his arm around his neck for a matter of seconds, if you accept their case. The individual appears to, they say, lose consciousness. It's not clear whether he lost consciousness or whether he was passing out from alcohol from the hits to his face. He had a broken nose.
Betsy Smith:He's bleeding.
Thomas Kenniff:Bleeding, yeah. Mean, there's just so many variables here. But it was for a matter of seconds and then he's back up and that's it. He goes to the hospital, he's never treated for anything to do with a neck injury, there's no bruising, there's no petechiae. He's not even complaining that, oh, hey, at the hospital that this happened to me, he's getting treated for his broken nose, for the injuries to his hands, so forth.
Thomas Kenniff:And that's not enough to stop the Bronx TA from sensing an opportunity. And they go forward and they indict Omar Habib on not only the city code regulation, but they wanna make sure they have maximum leverage so they charge them with strangulation, which is actually also a relatively new charge under the New York penal law. It's a little older than the chokehold law, but it was really intended for domestic violence cases. It was in response to domestic violence advocates saying that, look, you need a way charge, you know, abusive spouses, abusive husbands, what have you, with something more serious than a misdemeanor when maybe they don't cause much of an injury, but they choke someone. You know, and look, maybe that was a good law to pass for that.
Thomas Kenniff:It is, you know, not at all intended for anything like the situation that Omar finds himself in or the situation that was confronting Omar that night when they were, you know, confronted with a perpetrator that was highly intoxicated, combative. I mean, was, even when they had him in restraints, he's threatening to break free from the restraints. He had a he was a professional boxer, this the perp for years. You know, they were they really were dealing with so much. And, you know, Omar acted.
Thomas Kenniff:There were also civilians in the ambulance because the individual had two family members there. There's biohazards. It's a tight space. There's needles. So it's just you know, a terribly, terribly sad situation.
Thomas Kenniff:If you want to talk about, you know, lack of, you know, applying the law equally, first of all, the Bronx District Attorney, by many estimates, has less than a 30% conviction rate. They are consistently letting the worst of the worst offenders go through a revolving door criminal justice system, not even asking for bail, let alone setting bail on people that are recidivist, violent offenders that commit new crimes. And here's Omar, been on the police force since 2007.
Betsy Smith:He's a Marine. He's a family guy, yeah.
Thomas Kenniff:No prior criminal history. And you know, they ask and get remand on him after the jury verdict came down. The jury
Betsy Smith:verdict Explain to people what that is.
Thomas Kenniff:Remand is there ain't no bail. Remand is you can walk in with a bag full of million dollars, there is no bail to be set. It's what you typically see in homicide cases. If you're lucky in The Bronx, because you might see homicide and they might not remand, they might even set bail. But in a scene world, it's what you see in homicide cases or cases involving, you know, recidivist offenders, none of which apply here.
Thomas Kenniff:Now, he had been released on his own recognizance all the way, all throughout the trial, through the near three year anatomy of the case before it went to trial. He made every court appearance, he was on time. He lived in the county, he lived in the Bronx, he was a Bronx kid, Bronx man, grew up a Bronx kid, ties to the community, you name it. And the jury verdict comes down, okay, you know, that's arguably a change in circumstances now been convicted. But he wasn't thankfully, he's not facing homicide time.
Thomas Kenniff:It is considered a violent felony, but it's a low level violent felony. So we'll call it D violent felony in New York. He qualifies for an alternative sentence if the judge is willing to impose it, which is a sentence of probation or probation with a, you know, short jail condition, thirty, sixty days. So the idea that because the jury convicted him, becomes a flight risk because if he was facing a life sentence was ridiculous. Nonetheless, the Bronx district attorney, you know, insisted that he be remanded.
Thomas Kenniff:The judge originally went along with it. Thankfully, once I came into the case, we had a hearing last week and I did get the judge to change his status and now he's on house arrest. He doesn't belong on house arrest either, but I'd rather have him in his home than in Rikers Island where he was for the month until I So got involved in this it is just a terrible situation. You know, if anybody wants to try to support him, there's a website called freeomar.com, which is being hosted by an organization called Fund the First that does great work to raise money for police officers in this type of situation. And sadly, I'd like to tell you that it's only a Bronx problem.
Thomas Kenniff:It's only an Omar Habib problem, but this is going on. The war on police is being perpetrated at the local state and sadly at the federal level as well.
Betsy Smith:Now you're absolutely right and this is why the National Police Association decided to get involved in Omar and Eve's case, asking the Department of Justice to get involved, the Civil Rights Division, we're asking Harmony Dillon to take a look at this case because of exactly what you just said. Is being is Omar Habib being treated fairly? Is every would everyone else you know under the the statues that they're utilizing are they treated like him? So you're involved not just in that, but then is there an appeal process?
Thomas Kenniff:Yeah, I mean, that's really what we're teeing up here. Look, I was not willing to stand by and let him idle in Rikers Island. It was unacceptable to me. It should be unacceptable to anyone that believes in fairness because it's not what should and it's not what does happen in these sort of cases. In other words, you know, if you had someone who was not a police officer, who was a domestic abuser, who strangled their innocent female wife or fiance or girlfriend without causing any known injury, there is no way, in my opinion, that that individual would be, with no prior criminal record, be remanded upon a jury verdict.
Thomas Kenniff:In fact, even if they had a criminal record, they still wouldn't be remanded in my opinion, and my opinion is based on a lot of experience. So, you know, this is a situation where, as far as I saw it, my client was being treated differently because he's officer. And you know, we say, hey, look, you know, the police officer shouldn't be treated better than anyone else. Their testimony, if they're witnesses at trial, should be treated the same as a civilian. Fine, I can live with that.
Thomas Kenniff:Just don't treat them worse than the average person. And, you know, so I knew before we got the sentencing, before we got the appeal, I needed to get him out of Rikers Island. Was either going to do it through the trial judge, which thankfully we succeeded. And if that didn't work, was going to take it on a writ to the appellate court for an expedited bail review.
Betsy Smith:Awesome. Well, so I have to ask you this because it sounds like you're a pretty busy guy, but you had enough time apparently, thought you wanted to get involved in something else. So you wrote a book, You wrote a fiction book. Right?
Thomas Kenniff:Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I saw someone
Betsy Smith:I've read the the description, everything. It sounds fascinating. And, obviously, you have experience when it comes to running for office politics, things like that. Talk about the book.
Thomas Kenniff:Yeah. No. I appreciate that. I guess someone a friend of mine had a gave me a line yesterday. Thought it pretty good.
Thomas Kenniff:So if if you want something done, give it to a busy man.
Betsy Smith:Yeah.
Thomas Kenniff:Right. I never heard that before, but it's great line. Yeah. You know, look, it was it's kind of, you know, one of those passion projects for me. I thought of the concept a long time ago.
Thomas Kenniff:And I even wrote like a first chapter to outline it, put it in a writing contest and was one of the finalists. But I didn't have a middle, I didn't have an end. I mean, I don't have anything beyond the first chapter to be honest with you. You know, and through the years, I put it down for years at a time. Life happens, marriage, kids, deployments, you name it.
Thomas Kenniff:But I never completely let it go. It was always there. And then, you know, I think of something and say, hey, you know, this could work for the book and I'd write it down or put it in my Apple Notes on my phone. And, you know, a few years ago, I just made a determination. I said, look, know, I wanna really try to finish this thing.
Thomas Kenniff:And I did. And then once you finish it, you learn that the editing process, even the internal editing before you get an editor is brutal because now you're going back and looking at 100 pages you wrote over years and you're changing things and doing things. And then, you know, I got it looked at by some other very accomplished authors and editors. I got an agent, the agent shops that even once I got a publishing deal, which I never thought could happen, Then it takes like a year before it goes to publication because they have their stable of books and, you know, they time their releases based on their internal metrics. But it was, you know, I think in a lot of ways, there's so much heaviness in the world, right?
Thomas Kenniff:I mean, this conversation and so forth, and there's so much, you know, crossfire, and everybody's got an opinion, and there seems like there's no room for nuance, and I live in an adversarial world based on my profession. So I thought it would be really fun to write fiction, one where it's something that people can read it and just escape, I hope. Even though the subject matter is kind of heavy, it's still, you know, it's a thriller. It's fictional. And you know, there's also the liberation of being able to write without having to qualify every sentence with a case citation.
Betsy Smith:Exactly. Well, I gotta tell you, I love the concept of the book. I think it's gonna be a movie.
Thomas Kenniff:That's why love lot of a lot of people are saying that we have they did a book trailer, which is kind of a cool thing they do now.
Betsy Smith:Yes. It would make a great movie.
Thomas Kenniff:Yeah. And it's got a lot of law enforcement meaning. Yes. The protagonist is a, I mean, it's the scene of an abduction that is then later becomes a murder scene. Yeah, the protagonist is a young assistant district attorney, his, you know, mentors, an older assistant district attorney.
Thomas Kenniff:You know, they're especially, you know, if you're New York based, you know, there's a lot of scenes in the book that take place in, you know, real cop bars and cop restaurants. So, you know, a lot of my initial readers have been lawyers, but also law enforcement. And they love it. They love it.
Betsy Smith:Yeah, I'm expecting it to be a Netflix series. So I'm, you know, no pressure.
Thomas Kenniff:Well, I always like that it probably pays better than publishing does, but we'll see. You know, I mean, like, the other thing I bring out is, you know, I'm kind of learning, you know, it's baptism by fire in the publishing world because it's not the world I come from. But, you know, it's a very woke world. And I was warned about that going in. In fact, you know, I recently read reread We the Living by Anne Rand.
Thomas Kenniff:And, you know, she wrote, I think it was in the 1930s.
Betsy Smith:And in
Thomas Kenniff:the forward she talks about how, you know, when she escaped the Soviet Union and came to America, you know, she was warned as a writer that, look, you're gonna run into a lot of, you know, leftists in the big publishing houses and they're be resistant to taking your book even though it was a masterpiece. And she didn't believe it. Know, she's like, well this is America, that can't be. And sure enough, you know, twelve, thirteen of the big publishers passed on a book that became one of the greatest book, you know, selling books of all time. I'm not comparing myself to Anron, by the way.
Thomas Kenniff:But, you know, I've seen that just in the time I've been in this. I mean, I've, you know, had my book was supposed to be in a bookstore, you know, out on the East End Of Long Island. They were gonna throw a party and all that. And then they, you know, figured out, you know, what my background was and so forth. Even though I wrote a completely unpolitical book, there's no message in here that that's one side of the aisle or the other.
Thomas Kenniff:I was fastidious about avoiding that because I didn't wanna be typecast. But, you know, they'll shut you out. So my point is, in addition to it getting rave reviews, you know, from the New York Post, from Fox, from even some of the left media, You know, if you're looking to kind of support non woke literature and books and so forth, another reason to check out Tuxedo Park.
Betsy Smith:Exactly. Well said. And I'll tell you, Tom, with all that you're doing, you are truly standing in the gap. And you're involvement in the justice justice system, you're standing up for cops, and you're providing some entertainment. So you're doing it all, And so tell people, where can they find you?
Betsy Smith:Give me your social media and all that. And again, give us that website where they can help Omar.
Thomas Kenniff:Yeah, so I'll start with that because that's really, you know, why I'm here. I mean, look, you know, it's fun promoting the book and all that, but I'm here to promote a cause, right? And the cause is, you know, looking out for police officers that are being weapon weaponized against. I represent several, but you know, talking about Omar, it's freeomar.com, freeomar,omar.com. You can go to that, you know, it's not money, it's not going to my law firm, it's going to this cause, to his legal defense fund.
Thomas Kenniff:And it's funded by Fund the First. So check out freeomar.com. If you wanna check me out, you know, our firm website is, well, I'll give you the book website. So it's tuxedoparkbook.com. Doesn't get any easier than that, tuxedoparkbook.com.
Thomas Kenniff:And you can see that trailer we were talking about, which is really good. You know, learn a little bit about the story, learn about learn a little bit about me, but learn about the story. That sort of grab you. And there's links on that to Amazon and to the other major retailers I saw in the book. Or you just go to Amazon and type in Tuxedo Park and get the book there.
Thomas Kenniff:I think actually be running a sale right now, so you get that. Yeah, and then beyond that, look, I'm out there, Kenniff the Lawyer, k e n n I f f, the lawyer, I think is my Instagram. You can find me on Facebook there, Twitter TomKenniff. Just Google me.
Betsy Smith:I know, you are everywhere.
Thomas Kenniff:I'm not hard to find.
Betsy Smith:Exactly. And we so appreciate you taking time to talk to us about Omar's case and so much more. We're gonna have you back after the book is a movie and after you win Omar's appeal, of course, no pressure. But Tom, thank you. Thank you so much for being with us.
Thomas Kenniff:Oh, thank you, Betsy. It's great speaking with you. Thanks for giving me this platform, but more importantly, my client this platform.
Betsy Smith:Yeah. Amen. Absolutely. And if you'd like more information about the National Police Association, you can visit us at nationalpolice.org.
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