No charges for ‘Dawgfather’ over tweets, Halifax police say

Jerry Reddick, a.k.a. the Dawgfather TWITTER PHOTO

HALIFAX — Halifax hot dog vendor Jerry Reddick, also known as the Dawgfather, has avoided charges after he posted offensive and disturbing anti-Semitic remarks on social media in January.

“An investigation into the nature of comments posted on a social media site in January has concluded without charges,” a spokesperson for Halifax Regional Police said in a statement March 30,  

On Jan. 14, Reddick posted several comments on Twitter, some referring to Jews and the Holocaust, including a reference to ovens, as well as the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks in the United States.

Police received a complaint about the comments the day they were posted.

In the statement, police spokesperson Pierre Bordages said, “As a result of the investigation, which included consultation with the Public Prosecution Service, investigators determined that the posts do not meet the threshold for a criminal code charge to be laid. While Halifax Regional Police and undoubtedly many other people found these comments distasteful, shocking and offensive, they do not constitute a hate-related offence and the investigation into this matter has been concluded.”

When confronted about the remarks in January, Reddick said he made the comments to prove a point about the different standards applied to freedom of expression, a hot topic that was under intense debate around the world after the mass shooting at the Paris satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo  and the deaths of shoppers at the Hyper Cacher supermarket days before.

However, a couple of days later, Reddick, a proud Muslim who has sold hot dogs outside Dalhousie University’s Student Union Building for many years, deleted the controversial postings and apologized.

“I used a sledgehammer instead of a feather to get my point across about the double standard in free speech. I was wrong and I apologize!” he tweeted.

Speaking March 30, Reddick said he’s glad the case is over.

“It wasn’t anti-Semitic,” he said. “My question was how do you post a picture of a Muslim-looking man with a bomb on his head [and] that’s not considered hate speech.”

Given the upset his posts caused, Reddick acknowledged he could have been clearer in what he what he was trying to do.

One of Reddick’s offending tweets read, “Hitler asked his people, “How do you like your Jews”? Well done with a bagel and a kosher pickle. Freedom of speech goes both ways.”

Reddick also tweeted, “What do you call a Jew sitting in one of Hitler’s ovens? Toast, because they’re cooked. Freedom of speech goes both ways!” And, “What does one Jew say to the other Jew when they walk by a hot oven? Do you recognize anyone?”

Another post read: “In 2001 I thought Americans could fly by the way they were jumping from the twin towers in New York.”

Jon Goldberg, executive director of the Atlantic Jewish Council, said he was disappointed, but not surprised that charges weren’t laid, because it’s very difficult to get someone charged under that particular Criminal Code section.

“The threshold is high,” Goldberg said. “Whether remarks like that qualify as a prosecution or not, we will never stop my efforts to rebut such comments and to combat this overt anti-Semitism that was shown by the Dawgfather.”