Effective leadership is not for the faint of heart

Everything rises or falls on leadership. To be clear there are only two types of leadership; effective and ineffective. In our current political state all across America we have an abundance of ineffective leadership whereas unfortunately effective leadership is lacking.

Let’s look at some examples with how cities and states are dealing with the riots and violent disturbances that engulf a growing number of major cities.

In Seattle a group of insurrectionists carved out and took over a section of the city, walling it off as a no go zone to the Seattle Police Department. This included a police precinct that was abandoned and turned over to the rioters. The clueless mayor empowered these domestic terrorists and called it the summer of love oblivious to the rage exhibited by these marauders.

In Portland Oregon, the city as of this writing was experiencing 60 straight days of violent disturbances. The mayor there again has no sense of urgency in getting things under control while being in complete denial about the violence.

In other cities like New York, Los Angeles, Minneapolis, Chicago, Atlanta and Milwaukee you have mayors and a local political class that has crawled into bed with the devil, the cop-haters, while turning their backs on their law-abiding citizens and the men and women in law enforcement who are doing what they can to maintain law and order. This is not just shameful— it’s disgusting. The escalating anti-cop rhetoric is causing death and injury to police officers and citizens and resulting in hundreds of millions of dollars in property damaged, which is taking a huge toll on communities all across America.

Police commanders are another example of ineffective leadership as they cede business areas over to looters and arsonists by giving their officers stand-down orders. Chiefs and other commanders are kneeling and marching with the cop-haters of Black Lives Matter. It is a disgrace. Frontline officers are being pelted with rocks bottles and other projectiles. Officers being injured and killed has become a daily occurrence as if it is a part of the job description. They are under immense stress, under-resourced and have no political backing. Even minor uses of reasonable force are being looked at for possible criminal prosecution by overzealous politically-active prosecutors as Chiefs stand cowardly remain silent with their tails between their legs.

Calls for police reform are nothing more than a knee jerk reaction to what can be best described as an anomaly that occurred in Minneapolis, Minnesota. It serves as an excuse to ignore the real problem in all these urban cities and that problem is the street violence that occurs on a daily basis. Focusing on a“one-off” police officer’s action in Minneapolis allows spineless politicians to whistle past the graveyard of shootings and murders that are more prevalent than police use of force.

Let me add some perspective here. If you want to know what effective leadership looks like just go back to how Mayor Rudy Giuliani with ball-busting Commissioners William Bratton and Bernard Kerik made New York City livable again. Under there’re leadership they added more officers and resources. They enacted a crime reduction plan that led New York to being named the safest big city in America saving countless lives. They didn’t work with race hustlers like Al Sharpton. They shouted him down. They defended cops who acted appropriately. That doesn’t exist in these large cities today.

The elephant in the room is not policing, it the cultural rot and dysfunction that occurs in the urban ghettos across America. It’s things like ineffective parenting and in some cases, no parenting at all. It’s things like absent fathers, women having multiple children from different men leading to child abuse and neglect. It’s things like school failure and questionable lifestyle choices like joining gangs along with criminal behavior and drug use. But that’s the hard stuff for politicians. Leadership can start by holding up a mirror to the black underclass and demand that they adopt better lifestyle choices. Then we won’t need so much policing. Easier to go after the cops. After all they are the low hanging fruit.

Effective leadership would be starting a national discussion in America about the ugly reality of why so many black males choose criminality instead of leading a more mainstream lifestyle. Politicians need to ask why 53% of all known homicide suspects are black males and why 60% of all known robbery suspects are black males when blacks make up only 13% of the population. Yes, let’s have THAT conversation.

Policing doesn’t need to be reformed. The ghetto needs to be reformed. Changes in behavior and lifestyle of the underclass are what need to be reformed. But that is the hard stuff for politicians whose failed policies cause most of the conditions that require more policing. Policies like releasing career violent criminals from jails and prisons… another STUPID policy. All of this is then thrown into the lap of a police officer and you expect miracles and when things go awry through no fault of the police, the cop-haters demand change. The biggest threat to law-abiding people is not a police officer, it’s a stray bullet from a criminal indiscriminately shooting up the neighborhood.

Why won’t more politicians and police commanders state the obvious about ineffective leadership? Effective leadership is not for the faint of heart. It’s hard stuff. That is why it is in such short supply.

Sheriff David Clarke Jr. is former Sheriff of Milwaukee Co, Wisconsin, President of AmericasSheriff LLC, Board of Directors for the Crime Prevention 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