Enemies From Within: Political Activist Prosecutors Are Destroying Cities

Most police officers know that the work that goes into writing up an arrest and putting a case together for prosecutorial review involves a lot of time and effort. The level of probable cause needed for an indictment or a criminal charge at the charging stage is higher than that needed to make an arrest. Not a problem. We don’t expect prosecutors to rubber stamp every case we bring in at a charging conference. We do, however, expect a fair and honest review. If the case needs work, we expect the prosecutor to tell us what they need to proceed in court. Sometimes prosecutors’ use of discretion allows them to pursue other courses of action to resolve the case short of a criminal charge. Most cops have no problem with that either. The standard needed for proof beyond a reasonable doubt should be very high, and in some cases, options like a deferred prosecution is a better remedy. 

In my nearly four decades in law enforcement, I have always viewed the prosecutor’s office as a team member in pursuit of criminal justice and keeping the peace. Police and prosecutors being seen as not on the same team has been dealt a serious blow to order maintenance efforts however in the post Ferguson, Missouri riots following the police use of force in the justifiable death of Mike Brown.

What made broken windows policing a crime reduction strategy that led to record decreases in crime successful was that it closed the gap of police and prosecutors not being on the same page. The architect and designer of the order maintenance and crime reduction strategy was Jack Maple, an NYPD commander who began using computer generated data that precinct commanders could use to track hotspots of crime early on. Resources were directed to where crimes were happening in real time. “Put the cops on the dots,” he said. One area of weakness they discovered was where the criminal cases were slipping through the cracks. It was at the prosecution level where arrest cases went to die, so to speak. Nobody followed up on why very few cases were actually charged. Career and repeat offenders were being put back out on the street not long after being arrested. Maple wanted to know why no one inside NYPD was following through on arrest prosecutions. That was the missing link. The disconnect. NYPD brass started tracking arrest cases, and after convincing prosecutors of the need to keep repeat offenders locked away from society and neighborhoods to reduce crime, the prosecutors got on board. Criminals were now being held accountable and they knew it.

That worked for over two decades as the COMPSTAT program developed by Jack Maple swept throughout every police agency in America and those cities, too, experienced unprecedented drops in street crime. That era is over.

In 2018, a new wave of states’ attorneys and prosecutors were swept into office. They are in actuality political activists. They are criminal apologists, cop haters and progressive elites. They refuse to hold rioters and looters in Minneapolis, Chicago, Seattle and Portland accountable through criminal charging. Specifically, in Portland the state prosecutor recently announced that he will drop most of the charges filed against rioters accused of interfering with police, escape or harassment, disorderly conduct or criminal trespass according to the Oregonian newspaper. Those aren’t minor offenses.

State prosecutor Kimberly Foxx in Cook County, Illinois, which includes the city of Chicago, is another progressive political activist recently elected with the help of billionaire George Soros, another cop hater. A recent survey by the Chicago Tribune newspaper discovered that in 3 short years her office has dropped felony charges in 30% of cases which is 35% higher than her predecessor in the same time period.  The cases dismissed include murder, shootings, sex crimes and serious drug charges. Now that Chicago Mayor Lori Lightfoot, who was all in with the rioters in the beginning and has since had the rioters turn on her, she now points to Kim Foxx’s lack of will to prosecute as a reason for the spike in street crimes which has seen nearly 900 people shot leaving 151 dead in weekend street violence alone since Memorial Day weekend. That doesn’t even include the weekday violence that occurs in the Windy City. Other major cities have seen the same type of increases in violent crime since progressive criminal apologists have been swept into office. Two decades of historic crime declines have been wiped out in a very short period of time.

St. Louis, Missouri state prosecutor Kim Gardner, from the same Soros-funded election class, recently released 36 people who were arrested by police during recent rioting. They were accused of throwing rocks and bottles at police, shooting at police, throwing gasoline and attacking firefighters sent to put out fires. That is not protesting, that is rioting that state and federal laws prohibit. When they are released from custody, they rejoin the fray. It makes getting riots under control impossible as waves of criminals are used to restock the supply of rioters.

State prosecutors are behaving like defense lawyers here. They are responsible for prosecution, not defense work. They took an oath to uphold the law. They represent the State and the victims of crimes. Their responsibility is to the state, not a political progressive agenda. If they want to represent criminals and unlawful behavior they should immediately resign and start or join a defense lawyer firm or the ACLU.

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