Democrats Play Game Of, If At First You Don’t Succeed

There is not much to admire about the Democrat Party or what in 2021 can be called the Democrat Socialist Party of America. We’ll get to that in a minute. One thing I do admire about this band of cop-hating socialists, though, is their never say die attitude when pushing their anti-police agenda. This on-going attempt to reform policing has been proposed before, but the anti-police Democrats in Congress haven’t quite had the total support of their own party in the past to push it through. Now they do, along with control of Congress and the White House. This bill makes it clear that the War on Police nationally is starting up again after being smothered for four years by former President Donald Trump.

The latest proposed legislation introduced in the Congress is HR 1280, the misnamed George Floyd Justice in Policing Act. First, let’s deal with the name of this bill. As always with politicians, they play a game of creating the name of a bill that actually is the opposite of what it does. There is no justice in policing in this bill. It is an onerous piece of legislation that according to JBS.org, “Would: 1. Establish a national standard for the operation of police departments; 2. Mandate data collection on police encounters; 3. Reprogram existing funds to invest in transformative community-based policing programs; and 4. Streamline federal law to prosecute excessive force and establish independent prosecutors for police investigations.” It would also make it easier to prosecute law enforcement officers for unintentional harm that occurs when using force. OK, let’s cut the crap here.

This bill is nothing more than a naked attempt to federalize local policing, thereby creating a national police force. It is a violation of the Tenth Amendment of the U.S. Constitution that says, “the powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people.” In essence, HR 1280 is a blatant trampling of states’ rights. Policing is a local issue. States have a vested interest in securing the safety of their citizens not to mention that the Framers saw a national police force as a slippery slope toward a standing army, something they abhorred. Once organized under standard policies and training, they are ripe for a tyrant to use them to carry out their oppression under a dictatorship. That California U.S. Rep. Karen Bass is a lead author and pushing this through the House of Representatives is also alarming.

Karen Bass has a past history of belonging to and praising communist groups and she isn’t bashful in her support of the Communist Party USA from an early age where she describes in the book, Black Los Angeles: American Dreams and Realities. She was also a member of the Black Panther Party. Enough said on where her American-hating, cop-hating proclivities lie. In speaking about the need for police reform she indicated that 30 years after Rodney King was beaten by police in Los Angeles, “We are still trying to reform policing in the United States.”

Has Rep. Bass ever considered that the reason nothing has changed is because she is working on the wrong thing or that policing is as reformed as it’s ever going to be? Did she ever consider that it’s not policing that needs to be reformed, that it’s the American ghetto that needs to be reformed? Law enforcement officers are more professional, better trained and more educated than at any time in our history. It can’t be reformed any more at this point. It is futile to try. The American ghetto with all its urban pathologies has, in the same time period, gotten worse. Nothing changes because what is needed is not police reform but a culture change, a change in behavior by criminals and reform within the black family which is in tatters. Rep. Bass and other so-called progressives refuse to tell her constituents in her district that better lifestyle choices by young black males would lead to fewer police contacts and fewer arrests. She doesn’t have either the intelligence or the courage to tell her constituents that better parenting would help, better performance in schools will help, more in-home fathers raising, socializing

their sons and teaching them how to respect authority would help. But that is the hard stuff. That requires heavy lifting. Rep Bass and her brood of fellow useless politicians would rather take the intellectually lazy way out and lunge at the low-hanging fruit of police reform.

So here we are again at the well of fixing the police. It reminds me of the adage that the more things change the more they stay the same. These mindless elected officials can re-form, re-imagine, re-direct and any other re-whatever they want to with policing, not much will change over the next 30 years either until Congress enacts real ghetto reform that eliminates the self-inflicted urban pathologies that contribute to needing more police interaction. More interaction with police leads to more potential for conflict when lawful orders by police are ignored.

I have a suggestion for Rep. Bass. Let’s try something different if we want a better outcome. Let’s work smarter instead of on the wrong thing. Your way has not worked, neither will HR 1280. Let’s give my way a try.

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.co