Law Enforcement Vacation From History

America’s cities are once again the victim of the Left’s obsession with anarchic violence. “Not my president,” they cry, as they destroy and vandalize property, burn and steal, and beat the innocent for the crime of being present when and where they feel like beating someone.

Indications are these supposedly spontaneous uprisings are being funded and provoked by the usual leftist suspects and professional protestors. Al Sharpton, for example, is once again defining his character as a vicious racist, desperate to remain relevant as America, at long last, is poised to cancel all race cards.

Particularly ironic is that the protestors are trashing the very cities that, for the most part, voted for Hillary Clinton.

There are the usual Democrat attempts to find faithless electors, or to in some bizarre way, overturn the results of the election, despite the fact that Donald Trump won not only the popular vote–62,972,226 to 62, 277,750–but overwhelmingly won the electoral college: 306 to 232. Recall if you will all the networks and pundits solemnly intoning that Trump had no possible path to 270 electoral votes.

So for what are the “protestors” protesting? To overturn the election? No rational person can think that possible. To prevent President Trump from violating people’s rights? He ran on restoring the Constitution, and there is no indication he will do anything but fulfill that promise. To protest democracy?

They are taking advantage of an unwilling law enforcement vacation from history enacted by Barack Obama, and a credulous, willing Congress. Consider this from The Washington Examiner: 

Americans’ direct experience with crime is at a 16-year high, consistent with a gradual increase — from 22 percent in 2001 to 29 percent today — in the percentage saying that they or a household member was the victim of a robbery, vandalism or violent crime in the past year,’ Gallup reports.

What’s more, some 16 percent that they personally have been the victim of crime, most often theft.

Gallup said the recent increase wasn’t huge, but the years of increases a concern.

‘Americans’ self-reported experience with crime has been trending up since about 2001 and is now at a numerical high. Although not significantly higher than the 27 percent recorded in 2015, it could suggest the continuation of the upward trend and bears watching in the coming years,’ said the analysis.

President Obama set the conditions for the gradual destruction of the rule of law in July, 2009 when Henry Louis Gates, a black man, was arrested in Cambridge, MA. On camera, Mr. Obama admitted he knew nothing about the case, but said the police “acted stupidly.” While that racially tinged comment blew up in Mr. Obama’s face, leading to the nonsensical “Beer Summit,” it set the tone for the rest of Mr. Obama’s term in office.

Trayvon Martin–the son Mr. Obama never had–Michael Brown, Freddie Gray, all presented opportunities for Mr. Obama to support the rule of law. Instead, he and his Attorneys General sent DOJ community organizers to keep the racial pots stirred, and rather than supporting the police, encouraged racial division and anarchy. When Mr. Obama has had the opportunity to speak to the nation and make clear the importance of the rule of law, he has been silent, choosing instead to push racial progress back decades.

Even though Mr. Obama inherited declining crime rates, he and the Congress, including many Republicans, have been anxious not only to empty our prisons of dangerous felons, but to make it more difficult to send them back when they commit additional crimes. Obviously they either don’t understand, or choose to ignore several salient facts. A relatively small number of criminals in any area of the country commit the overwhelming majority of crimes. And the primary benefit of prisons is not rehabilitation, but keeping the worst predators away from the innocent. If they’re locked up, they are–for the most part– committing crimes only against each other.

Mr. Obama has also been doing his part to secure early releases–clemencies and pardons–for hundreds of dangerous felons, including many that have committed firearms offenses. This from a man supposedly concerned about “gun violence.” By the time he leaves office, he will have released thousands of the most prolific and dangerous criminals in the federal prison system. There is no doubt many will return to their criminal ways.

In addition, the Department of Justice has been forcibly taking over police departments, imposing rules that make it all but impossible for officers to enforce the law, particularly against young, black male criminals. The “Ferguson Effect” has spread across the nation. Police officers are avoiding any contacts with criminals, particularly minority criminals, because they reasonably believe they will not be supported in lawfully doing their duties. More than that, they have reason to believe they might be fired, even prosecuted for entirely lawful actions.

I wrote about such a case in October in The Ferguson Effect: Deception? wherein a female Chicago police officer was badly beaten by a hulking black gang member on PCP because she was afraid to use her firearm, even though she would, under Illinois law, have been completely justified.

This has had the effect of causing experienced, qualified, ethical police officers to flee the profession as fast as they can. It has also made police recruiting very difficult, as the few that seek the job are often exactly the kind of people no competent police chief or sheriff wants in uniform.

credit: bouldercolorado.gov

There is another, perhaps surprising, factor. Police agencies do their best to hire people only just smart enough for the job, as I wrote in September, 2014’s Police IQ: 

During my early career in law enforcement, I had the odd distinction of having two separate police chiefs in two separate law enforcement agencies in two separate states tell me that I was too intelligent to be a policeman. Readers may debate my intellect, as they often do, but I tell this little morality tale not to pat myself on the back of my brain, but to set up the story that follows. Those hapless police chiefs were giving me a more or less backhanded compliment. They weren’t my fans, yet I was so productive they couldn’t fire me without far more mistakes on my part than ten men could make. Yet, they obviously didn’t realize what they were saying about themselves and their own agencies, nor did they apparently appreciate the inherent irony.

My experience has taught me that police chiefs, sheriffs and politicians in general want police officers to be only smart enough and no smarter. Unfortunately, they really can’t say just what “smart enough” is. It’s rather like Supreme Court Justice Potter Stewart, who couldn’t come up with a definition of pornography in Jacobellis v. Ohio, but noted ‘I know it when I see it.’

In 2011, I wrote about race based hiring imposed on police agencies by the Obama Administration. That’s bad enough. Racial quotas are an unmitigated disaster for public safety. But now we have the New London, CT police department that apparently knows what ‘smart enough’ and ‘too smart’ are. And a federal appeals court agrees. From Powerline: 

All of the trends in law enforcement and crime are moving in the wrong direction, thanks to more than ample encouragement by the Obama Administration. The man who was going to heal the nation’s racial wounds, heal the planet and calm the seas, instead has worsened virtually every problem we’ve ever had, and where race is concerned, has stirred up animosity that didn’t previously exist. And the minority urban poor, about who Democrats claim to care so very much, are inevitably the victims of much of the crime they unleash on the innocent. This is not merely a matter of policy, an intellectual argument for faculty lounges and congressional dining rooms. Lives are at stake.

And when it’s time for national “leaders” to stand up for democracy, for a peaceful transition of power, for the rule of law and civilized conduct, where is Barack Obama? Where is Hillary Clinton? Where are our congressional leaders? Why aren’t they, supposedly the leaders of these sorts of protestors, doing everything they can to restore order?

This is the legacy Barack Obama leaves Donald Trump and America.

This is the burden we all assume in January, 2017.

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