Not long ago, we reported that the University of California Berkeley would receive $98,000 from the federal government for a project that would create "a resource for understanding the complex history of the Black Panther Party."

The National Park Service was to be responsible for helping to implement the project.

Well, according to the Washington Free Beacon, that ain't happening. 

Immediately after the grant announcement was made, critics erupted in anger.

Upon hearing about the grant, Chuck Canturbury, national president of The Fraternal Order of Police sent a letter to President Donald Trump to express his organization's "outrage and shock."

At the time of the grant announcement, the National Park Service said, "Committed to truthfully honoring the legacy of [Black Panther Party] activists and the San Francisco Bay Area communities they served, the project seeks to document the lives of activists and elders and the landscapes that shaped the movement."

As the National Park Service was to distribute the money, Canturbury and other opponents to the grant centered their complaints on the killing of park ranger Kenneth Patrick.

Patrick was killed in the 1970s by Veronza Leon Curtis Bowers Jr., who was affiliated with the Black Panther Party.

"Mr. President, as far as we are concerned the only meaning they brought to any lives was grief to the families of their victims," Canturbury's letter read. "According to our research, members of this militant anti-American group murdered 16 law enforcement officers over the course of their history. Among their victims was U.S. Park Ranger Kenneth C. Patrick. He was murdered in cold blood by three members of the Black Panther Party on 5 August 1973. His killer, who remains behind bars, still considers himself a Black Panther and a ‘political prisoner.'"

Canterbury continued, "It is appalling that the National Park Service, Ranger Patrick's own agency, now proposes to partner with [Berkeley] and two active members of this violent and repugnant organization."

The letter made no mention of the brutal execution of Black Panther leader Fred Hampton in his own bed by Chicago police officers on the orders of the FBI in 1969, the death of Bobby Hutton at the hands of Oakland police officers or any of the deaths of Black Panthers caused by law enforcement. 

Nevertheless, the backlash proved enough for the funding to be rescinded. 

National Park Spokesman Jeremy Barnum confirmed that the agency will not fund the project. Berkeley has yet to comment on the matter.