Demoralizing Police Forces Is Insane

Demoralizing Police Forces Is Insane

Writing for the Wall Street Journal, columnist Heather Mac Donald has chronicled one of the least surprising cause and effect stories afflicting America. “The nation’s two-decades-long crime decline may be over,” she writes. “Gun violence in particular is spiraling upward in cities across America.” Why, as if one didn’t know? “The most plausible explanation of the current surge in lawlessness is the intense agitation against American police departments over the past nine months,” she explains.

The stats are daunting. Homicides in Milwaukee are up 180 percent by May 17 compared with the same period last year. In St. Louis there’s an uptick in shootings, robberies and homicide by margins of 39 percent, 43 percent and 25 percent, respectively. Atlanta has seen a 32 percent spike in murders, Chicago a 24 percent increase in shootings and a 17 percent increase in homicides, and violent crime in Los Angeles was up 25 percent. And in Baltimore, where a somnambulant Mayor Stephanie Rawlings-Blake gave rioters “space” to loot and pillage either by accident or design, the murders of a young mother and her 7-year-old child brought Baltimore’s monthly homicide total in May to 38. By Sunday, the total had topped out at 43, making May the deadliest month the city has seen in more than 40 years.

A combination of high profile media stories, many of which were grossly inaccurate in all their “hands up don’t shoot” glory, and an Obama administration determined to both federalize police forces and convince black Americans that policing in their communities is systematically biased has led us to the point where acquittals of police officers using deadly force “are now automatically presented as a miscarriage of justice,” Mac Donald explains.

Gene Ryan, president of the Fraternal Order of Police Lodge 3 in Baltimore reveals where his city, and many others, are likely headed. "The criminals are taking advantage of the situation in Baltimore since the unrest,“ he explained. "Criminals feel empowered now. There is no respect. Police are under siege in every quarter. They are more afraid of going to jail for doing their jobs properly than they are of getting shot on duty.”

An exaggeration? Here’s a video of Baltimore City State Attorney Marilyn Mosby speaking to an audience on April 28, before even the preliminary investigation leading to the indictment of the six officers charged in the death of Freddie Gray was completed. During her speech Mosby speaks of a justice system that has “historically and disproportionately affected so many communities of color.” As result Mosby promises to “pursue justice — by any and all means necessary.” In New York, the State District Attorneys Association and Cuomo administration officials are working on a plan to appoint independent monitors when grand juries fail to indict police officers who kill civilians. In other words, the grand jury process itself becomes largely irrelevant and the concept of double-jeopardy becomes enshrined.

So what happens as a result? In Baltimore arrests are down a whopping 56 percent in May. Baltimore Police Commissioner Anthony Batts who insists his officers “are not holding back” in tough areas are nonetheless encountering severe hostility in the Western District that was the epicenter of violence in that city. “Our officers tell me that when officers pull up, they have 30 to 50 people surrounding them at any time,” Batts said.

Yet for the first 19 days of the month in 2014 police booked an average of 126 suspects a day. This year it was 55. “I’m afraid to go outside,” said resident Antoinette Perrine, whose brother was one of last month’s murder victims. “It’s so bad, people are afraid to let their kids outside. People wake up with shots through their windows. Police used to sit on every corner, on the top of the block. These days? They’re nowhere.”

An NYPD officer told Mac Donald why. “Any cop who uses his gun now has to worry about being indicted and losing his job and family,” the officer explained. “Everything has the potential to be recorded. A lot of cops feel that the climate for the next couple of years is going to be nonstop protests.”

The Washington Post, making every effort to keep the anti-cop meme alive, offered up this quote from Ronald L. Davis, a former police chief who heads the Justice Department’s Office of Community Oriented Policing Services. “We have to get beyond what is legal and start focusing on what is preventable. Most (killings) are preventable,” he insisted, adding that police “need to stop chasing down suspects, hopping fences and landing on top of someone with a gun. When they do that, they have no choice but to shoot.” How Davis has determined that most killings are preventable remains a mystery, given the split second decisions officers must make in the overwhelming majority of cases.

Yet he inadvertently makes it clear that cops chasing armed suspects is a fool’s errand.

Furthermore, while the Post states that it is “compiling a database of every fatal shooting by police in 2015, as well as of every officer killed by gunfire in the line of duty,” they mention only the 385 people killed by police nationwide so far this year, conspicuously omitting the number of officers who paid the ultimate price. The FBI has produced stats showing the number of officers feloniously killed in the line of duty rose to 51 in 2014, nearly 89 percent higher than the 27 cops killed in 2013. Moreover 15 of those officers were shot in ambush-style attacks. Through May 4 year, 14 officers have been shot and killed while another 24 have killed while performing their duty.

One more thing: As columnist Robert VerBruggen discovered, The Washington Post’s depiction of some stories where cop might in fact be guilty of some sort of crime left out critical details, such as one story where cops fired into the car of a “fleeing” suspect who was only being served with a warrant for failing to pay $170 in felony probation fees. Left out of the story? According to the cops, the fleeing suspect tried to run them over.

Mac Donald cites other troubling trends that exacerbate the lawlessness, such as initiatives that “reflect the belief that any criminal-justice action that has a disparate impact on blacks is racially motivated,” she explains. Thus stop-and frisk policies that got guns off the street have been largely abandoned. And the “broken windows” strategies targeting low-level offenders in an effort to reduce the atmosphere of lawlessness in bad neighborhoods, as well as get criminals off the street before they committed more serious crimes, is being challenged by activists and politicians. “Cracking down on quality-of-life crimes and seizing illegal guns before they were used were the heart and soul of ‘broken windows,’” explains New York Post columnist Michael Goodwin. “It was about enforcing the law both to catch people who had broken it and to prevent others from committing crimes. Neither is a priority now. So crime and disorder are increasing, and unless the cops are allowed to be cops again, buckle up and keep your head down. It’s going to get worse. Much worse.

As Mac Donald demonstrates, it already has. And the concept of decriminalization being pushed by the left will undoubtedly make it worse. "There are no real consequences for committing property crimes anymore and the criminals know this," revealed Los Angeles Police Lt. Armando Munoz.

That is not to say cops are innocent. But the efforts by the Obama administration, aided by race-baiters like Al Sharpton and media outlets like The New York Times, who seek to impugn entire police forces for the actions of a handful of officers — even as the Times bemoans the "race gap” in American police departments without once mentioning the reality that many minorities don’t want to be police officers — is nothing less than a despicable attempt to keep an anti-cop/racist cop narrative alive and well.

It is a narrative that completely ignores the reality of the disproportionate amount of homicides and other crimes committed by black Americans (overwhelmingly against other black Americans). It is a narrative abetted by a president whose track record extends from his past with Rev. Jeremiah Wright and his racist rantings and assertions the Cambridge police “acted stupidly” when they arrested Harvard professor Henry Louis Gates Jr., to his efforts to exacerbate racial discord during and after the Trayvon Martin saga. It is a narrative sanctioned by former Attorney General Eric Holder who believes Americans are a “nation of cowards” when it comes to discussing race, who insisted voter ID is tantamount to “black disenfranchisement,” and who ran the most racially polarized DOJ in recent history.

And so, many Americans, mostly poor, mostly minority and mostly bamboozled by the aforementioned culprits will simultaneously rip “racist,” “lawless” police officers in their neighborhood, even as they hammer them for failing to make timely arrests in those same, rapidly deteriorating  neighborhoods.

Americans should be very clear here: The Left owns "this damed if we do damned if we don’t" approach to policing, and all the #blacklivesmatter b.s. won’t obscure the increasing body count — overwhelmingly minority — that will be the inevitable outcome of this ideologically-inspired schizophrenia. “I’ve never seen anything like it,” said Milwaukee Police Chief Edward A. Flynn, referring to the now-fashionable hostility aimed at police. “I’m guessing it will take five years to recover.” Five years is an eternity for millions of innocent Americans trapped in bad neighborhoods, besieged by unrelenting fear. They are the real victims here. Who speaks for them?


By Arnold Ahlert