JULY 2021 Blues Vol 37 No. 7

Groups Ask, Where’s

Groups Ask, Where’s the Money Nat? Nat Silvester went viral for all the wrong reasons, and lost his job. Now he’s raking it in, while promising to use the cash for a series of ambitious—and yet to launch—projects. By Kali Holloway In a video released in early June, just days after his firing from the Bellevue Marshal’s Office, former Idaho police officer Nate Silvester—who got internet famous in April with a viral TikTok mocking LeBron James’ tweet calling for accountability for the cop who killed 16-year-old Ma’Khia Bryant — stated that the teen girl’s “death was tragic, but it was also justified.” He also chastised his critics’ “radical woke ideologies,” and issued a declaration, or perhaps a warning, that “because I’m not wearing a badge anymore, you’re going to be hearing a lot more from me, so buckle up.” Now Silvester seems to be delivering on that promise, by launching a police-boosting podcast, writing a book about being a cop that’s slated for release later this year, and founding a nonprofit to give financial aid to police officers who have been unfairly “mistreated.” He’s also expanding his social media footprint to defend law enforcement agents from what he described to me as the “anti-police sentiment… of the left.” All this is made possible not only by the free time of unemployment, but also because of a GoFundMe campaign for Silvester that has seen the donations roll in. The campaign, launched by Silvester’s friend Gannon Ward on April 28, initially had a goal of just ,000—money meant to supplement “at least a week’s worth of pay for suspension” from the Marshal’s Office after Silvester’s TikTok went viral and officials put out a statement declaring “this is NOT how we expect our Deputies to act on duty or use city time.” Three days later, the GoFundMe had over 0,000 in donations; less than a week after that, funds topped 0,000. As the pot has climbed, and the organizer has repeatedly increased the target monetary goal, Silvester has thanked donors via short talking-head videos posted on the campaign page. “We’re not going to tolerate being attacked or bullied or vilified in the media anymore,” he told followers in an early clip. There were also new beneficiaries named as the Go Fund Me donation pile grew. After the campaign surpassed its goal within hours of launching, an update from organizer Ward informed donors that then-officer Silvester “has decided to donate a portion to the charity The First Responders Children’s Foundation, a charity for the families of fallen officers and first responders. Therefore,” Ward added, “I’m upping the goal.” A day later, as funds continued to accrue and the target goal was again raised, a video update from Silvester noted “the additional funds that are coming in…they’re going to be used to make more content to shed positive light on law enforcement.” The next day, a new Silvester clip announced plans to found “a nonprofit organization that’s going to benefit officers” who are “being vilified and demonized constantly by Hollywood, by the media, and we can’t stand for it anymore.” (In a lengthier text update, Silvester indicated that “I will be the CEO of this organization.”) On May 6, Silvester posted footage of himself touting recent TV appearances he’d made since going viral, and declared he’d just signed a book deal to produce a work that would “help educate people like LeBron James and others who have a very limited understanding of police officers.” Silvester’s Go Fund Me goal has now been raised to ,000,000, and the campaign has taken in more than 0,000—and climbing. The header on the page was long ago changed from “Please help Officer Nate Silvester recover his pay” to “Please Help Officer Silvester & Other Families.” No doubt, his indications that he plans to spread the wealth, so to speak, have helped the flow of donations continue. When I spoke with Silvester earlier this week, I asked whether he had yet given the promised donation to the First Responders Children’s Foundation (FRCF). “Well, no,” he told me. “For some reason, they’re very hard to get ahold of, and they initially reached out to me when they found out that I was going to be donating a portion of that GoFundMe campaign to them. And then, there was some brief correspondence between me and the foundation, but I haven’t heard from them since. I’m still waiting to reconnect with the staff at that foundation so that we can discuss that. But that still hasn’t changed. And I’m still going to donate to them, but just waiting to hear back essentially.” I got a hold of staff from FRCF in a few hours and with relative ease, and talked via phone and via email with spokesperson Dan DeMello. In a written message, DeMello told me that after Silvester “declared the proposed donation via the media,” an FRCF staff member reached out to him, and an “enthusiastic” exchange occurred. However, recently, the agency has been awaiting Silver’s next move. “Last contact the foundation actually had with him was in late April. We reached out on May 3 and then again later in May (on Go Fund Me) in the hopes of confirming an exact amount, but haven’t heard back yet,” DeMello wrote to me. “We’re hoping he’ll come through on the donation because the funds would mean a lot to these children whose parents were lost in the line of duty.” One of the things keeping Silvester busy is likely Never Off Duty, the book he has in the works. Silvester told me that while it won’t be a traditional memoir, the book will “definitely cover my experience as a police officer, but then the larger focus will be on what many police officers experience over the course of their careers.” 40 The BLUES POLICE MAGAZINE The BLUES POLICE MAGAZINE 41