UMASS Plays Host to Terrorist Cop-Killer

Chuck Canterbury, National President of the Fraternal Order of Police, condemned in the strongest possible terms the decision of certain faculty members at the University of Massachusetts at Amherst to welcome convicted terrorist Raymond Luc Lavasseur to campus and for providing him with a forum to speak.

“This notorious killer is responsible for more than twenty bombings and the death of New Jersey State Trooper Philip J. Lamonaco,” Canterbury said.  “This terrorist is a guest of the university’s faculty to talk to students as part of a ‘Colloquium on Social Change.’  Is that the lesson these so-called teachers want to send?  That you can achieve social change and prominence through violence and murder?”

Lavasseur, described as New York City’s “most prolific bomber,” headed a domestic terrorist group called the United Freedom Front, which conducted a series of bombings from Boston to Washington, D.C.–including one at the U.S. Capitol Building in November 1983--for more than a decade.  The terror campaign included nine bank robberies and more than twenty bombings that severely injured numerous victims.  In 1981, the members of the group murdered Trooper Lamonaco.

“Governor Patrick has condemned his visit, as have law enforcement and victims’ rights groups across the country.  This pressure initially got this terrorist uninvited, but the university has since relented and is hiding behind the phrase ‘academic freedom,’” Canterbury said.  “The exercise of freedom carries with it responsibility–you have to know right from wrong.  Glorifying terrorism and equating it with social change is wrong.  The University of Massachusetts should be ashamed of its faculty, which has turned this colloquium into a sick joke.  Who will speak at this event next year--Terry Nichols and Zacarias Moussaoui?”

The Fraternal Order of Police is the largest law enforcement labor organization in the United States, with more than 327,000 members.