There Is A Big Difference

I want to make something clear. There has been an attempt by left-wing media and Democrat politicians to twist the meaning of the call to defund the police and try to intimate that conservatives calling to defund the Federal Bureau of Investigation is the same thing and I am not going to let them get away with it. I find it incredible and disingenuous for these cop-hating people on the left to suddenly leap to defend the FBI after years of attacking the courage, commitment, honor and sacrifice of local police. Some even went so far as defending the Black Lives Matter calls to abolish local police and without any evidence to support the lie that cops are racist.

A recent news report points out that, “Congressman Jim Jordan and other Republicans used to be hysterical about defunding the police. Gone are the days in which Republicans whine hysterically about Democrats and the drive to defund the police.”

I am one of those people on record for calling that the FBI not just be defunded, but abolished. Now let me make the case and explain the difference.

First, it is important to distinguish between the two entities. The FBI is not a police agency. They are an investigative agency. Other than a few who work on task forces with local police, the overwhelming majority of agents are information gatherers. They don’t make arrests without the permission of a United States Department of Justice attorney. Their reports are not heavily scrutinized before going to a grand jury looking for an indictment. From the onset of an arrest by local cops, every aspect is reviewed along the way. Any slight misstep with the arrest or in collecting evidence will get the case thrown out before it ever sees the inside of a courtroom. There is a distinct difference. More on that later.

Additionally, FBI agents do not keep the peace, patrol neighborhoods or come into contact with citizens on a daily basis. The FBI gets to operate in anonymity. They get to hide what they are doing behind the label of their work being classified as top secret or confidential. They don’t wear body cameras that are used by media to know exactly what they are doing 24-7. My point is not to summarily dismiss what their role as information gatherers is, but do not ever mistake or compare what they do as policing. It’s not. It’s not even close.

Back to my previously mentioned comment about FBI agents not having everything they do in investigations being closely scrutinized. I have detailed instances as to why it should be more than just defunding the FBI before today. In one previous column here I wrote, imagine the NYPD, Chicago Police of the LAPD being accused of a long-standing pattern of breaking their own rules on investigations, illegally using informants and undercover agents to spy on politicians, journalists and religious leaders who are engaged in constitutionally protected activities. Let’s say that a local police agency was found to be engaged in the unauthorized use of physical surveillance on people not accused of a crime in 28, yes 28 cases in a one-year period. And what if a local police agency audit found that its department broke its own rules 747 times on sensitive intercepts of electronic communications and that corrective measures did not stop the illegal activity? To be more specific, that is a violation of the Fourth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution. And not one person in the FBI was held accountable.

The American people have no use for a law enforcements agency that operates illegally or in the shadows. At the end of the day, all a law enforcement agency has is its integrity. With the awesome power and authority the FBI possesses, they can ruin and destroy lives. Once they have you in their crosshairs, they force you to plea bargain mainly because you run out of money trying to defend

yourself. I know people who this has happened to. Local police don’t have that kind of authority. Everything that a local cop does is scrutinized. They can’t classify their work as top secret. They don’t get to heavily redact reports they have to release through the Freedom of Information Act or at the exculpatory phase of due process.

People have asked me if calling for abolishing the FBI is too extreme and what we would replace the FBI with. The FBI has become a corrupt runaway bureaucracy. Their behavior has become reminiscent of the Nazi’s Stasi or brownshirts. They do not feel accountable or answerable to congressional oversight. Every time Director Christopher Wray appears before a congressional committee to testify and the answers would embarrass the Bureau, he cites confidentiality and that the release of that information would compromise national security or an ongoing investigation. It’s a lie. Congress is our watchdog on these unelected bureaucracies.

The FBI has a culture problem, and it has been corrupted to the point of not being worth being saved. Simply changing directors hasn’t helped change the Bureau’s out-of-control culture. Agents are coming forward as whistleblowers to detail the culture of corruption. They are telling of being met with retaliation internally for doing so. The FBI culture of corruption is anathema to a functioning republic. It is a threat to the very democracy that many Democrat politicians like to talk about. This is beyond a one-off or a few bad apples. It is agency-wide. It’s up, down and across the spectrum. It is beyond fixing. It’s time to abolish it. Start over. We won’t miss much in the interim. In fact, we will be more secure in our our persons, houses, places and effects as written in the U.S. Constitution.

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: Moving Beyond Hashtags of Race Crime and Politics for a Better America. To learn more visit www.americassheriff.com