After Further Review
/I have spent the better part of the last five years warning people that the inane public policy course many woke Democrats had the country going down would have catastrophic consequences for mainstream Americans. The Democratic Party went on a jihad against things like law and order as they crawled into bed with slimy characters from Black Lives Matter and Antifa who incessantly bashed the police and heralded criminals as heroes. They pushed things like defunding and even abolishing the police, eliminating bail for repeat and serious violent criminals and eliminating the use of jails and prisons as a crime control tool. They pushed removing police from schools, although I agree that police should not be used in schools as hall monitors. It absolves teachers from their responsibility to control student behavior and parents of their responsibility to discipline and control their child’s behavior. What does it say about the ineffective parenting going on today when we have to resort to using the criminal justice system to control children? But I digress.
The seeds of hate sown by these straight-up cop haters are not just taking root but are shooting up above ground and now that naïve voters are waking up to see what has sprouted, and it isn’t pretty. Crime rates are rising as criminals control large swaths of public spaces along with businesses having to stand idly by as thieves brazenly remove their merchandise from the shelves and not run but simply saunter from the store without paying. Normal people have watched news reports of this, and although they shouldn’t be shocked, they are.
What has happened in numerous cities and states in the recent elections could be seen as a bellwether, as voters went to the polls to push back and repudiate these insane progressive policy changes.
An example of the sea change was in the Commonwealth of Virginia, where voters elected a governor who ran a campaign with law and order as a major piece of his platform as he pounded away about the rising crime rates in the state. In Minnesota, a place that could be considered as ground zero in the war on cops, the voters convincingly rejected a crazy idea of replacing the Minneapolis Police Department with some Public Safety Department staffed by social workers. This as violent street crime including murders have risen exponentially in Minneapolis. Clueless Democrat politicians overplayed their hand. They thought they were on a roll with all the cop bashing.
Where they erred was in thinking that the general public’s emotional distress over the death of George Floyd would stay permanent as they continued to push extreme public policy shifts. That emotional overreaction never lasts. People eventually settle down and come to their senses as more information about a traumatic incident is revealed. As the public learned more about Floyd’s character, they still thought the way he died was horrific but they learned that he was geeked up on fatal levels of fentanyl, was passing a counterfeit bill to buy more drugs, was with his supplier at the time of passing the bill and that he did time in prison for a home invasion burglary where he held a loaded firearm to the stomach of a pregnant women threatening to shoot her. When they learned all of this about him, many realized that we should not be making crazy public policy shifts in our attitude about crime and violence over what should reasonably be seen as an anomaly in police behavior.
And in another upon further review moment, numerous school systems are reversing course about removing police officers from schools as gang violence and other fights are rising inside schoolhouses and weapons are making their way inside. Here are a few examples. In Desert Springs, Nevada, local lawmakers who pulled police from schools reversed their decision and renewed the contracts. In Santa Cruz, California, public school officials returned to having a cop in schools after a student was fatally stabbed on campus. The same has happened in Rochester, New York, Washington D.C. and Alexandria Virginia after one superintendent cited an escalation in “disciplinary infractions.” We can safely read that as dog whistle and wordsmithing for violent behavior. You don’t need a police officer called in for “disciplinary offenses.”
A National Police Association official said that programs placing police in schools became one of the victims of the ridiculous defund the police movement. As I mentioned previously, I think it says more about our schools becoming less about education as schools resemble juvenile detention centers housing uncontrollable miscreants. Then we dump it on police. Then, when police have to use force to remove some uncontrollable teen from a classroom, everybody wants to know why force had to be resorted to. It’s because the goof wouldn’t comply with the officer’s lawful command to peacefully leave. I always ask why the parent wasn’t called first. Let them have to come to school and handle their unsocialized misfit.
The question is whether this trend will continue into the future and across the country or will the next police use of force incident that goes viral stop the reversal of this madness. Only time will tell.
Sheriff David A. Clarke Jr. is former Sheriff of Milwaukee Co, Wisconsin, President of Americas Sheriff LLC, President of Rise Up Wisconsin INC, 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
