Election Just Threw Police From The Frying Pan Into The Fire

Just when we thought it couldn’t get any worse for the American police officer with what has happened to them over the last year, it did. And at a time when police agencies are already struggling with draconian budget cuts, record-high resignations and retirements.

Barring some successful legal challenge by the Trump campaign, we are currently staring down the barrel of a cop-hating Joe Biden who thinks that police should be trained to confront armed subjects by shooting them in the leg and his vice presidential running mate Kamala Harris, who stated she was proud of Jacob Blake. Blake was armed with a knife, told numerous time to drop it in the lunge area of two Kenosha, Wisconsin, police officers and headed inside a car that 3 kids were in. Police, fearing for their safety, shot Blake, paralyzing him from the waist down. That is who Harris is proud of. She spoke with him on the phone from his hospital bed. She did not reach out to the two Kenosha police officers to see how they were doing. These two are a threat to every cop in America. And it gets worse.

Black Lives Matter co-founder Patrisse Cullers, an avowed cop-hater and Marxist who advocates for the destruction of the nuclear family, recently publicly asked for a meeting with Biden and Harris. She said, “We want something for our vote.” That is not a request, it’s a threat.

Black Lives Matter has one objective. It is not to simply defund police. It’s not to reform police. Their overarching objective is to abolish police, and until that happens they are content with advocating for hurting and killing police.

A Biden-Harris administration can do most of their damage to policing in the nomination of the next Attorney General and U.S. Attorneys around the country. Biden has indicated that he will continue with Obama-era polices involving any police reform. That means get ready for more pattern and practice investigation leading to forced consent decrees with any agency involved in a deadly force situation, no matter how straightforward the incident is and no matter that the officer is eventually exonerated. In fact, often times the Obama-led USDOJ rushed investigators into a city without waiting for the locals to conclude their own investigation. Before Obama began sticking his activist nose into police use of force investigations, the role of the USDOJ was to act as an overseer. It reviewed reports and pored over evidence to ensure that a thorough investigation occurred. Under Obama, the USDOJ took anecdotal claims of a racist police agency as pattern and practice. It looked at traffic stop data as the benchmark. That is the wrong benchmark. It then manipulated data then bullied the city and department into signing a consent decree. Most mayors just caved. The decree came with money for training. It’s reporting requirements, however, were onerous and burdensome. Officers were spending valuable patrol time filling out reports at the precinct to satisfy compliance. The Obama-led USDOJ had 21 consent decrees in place after conducting 22 pattern and practice investigations. That doesn’t pass the smell test. It’s a statistical anomaly. It was bad enough to have race baiting US Attorney General like Eric Holder. It will be worse if an avowed cop-hater is nominated. Imagine Patrisse Cullers leading a White House task force on police reform.

So, what do we do? Normally I would suggest and remind mayors that they should resist any and all attempts for a federal takeover of their police department. It’s a Tenth Amendment issue. States have a vested interest in controlling crime. Why give it away to the federal government? Resist the urge to fall on your sword by virtue signaling or flaunting your racial sensitivity. It won’t matter. You will not be given any leniency from the federal government. The problem with that advice is that most of these cities that are likely to be involved in a use of force incidents are cities controlled by Democrat mayors and city councils. So that advice will fall on deaf ears. That leaves few options.

I’m left with something I never thought I would ever say to police officers, but this is existential. No police officer should take anything but manageable risks. Don’t sign up for voluntary overtime. You just might end up in that use of force on an overtime assignment. Take advantage of stress-related duty disability options. These work conditions are destroying officer quality of life. It is an occupational safety hazard to work under these conditions without the safety equipment required to do the job.

Sheriff David Clarke Jr. is former Sheriff of Milwaukee Co, Wisconsin, President of AmericasSheriff LLC, Board member of the Crime Research Center, author of the book Cop Under Fire: Beyond Hashtags of Race Crime and Politics for a Better America. To learn more visit www.americassheriff.com