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Dana Loesch
credit: twitchy.com

Big city police chiefs generally have credentials that look good on paper.  But what counts more, what they must have to get and keep their jobs, is progressive street cred.  As one might imagine, progressive ideology and effective policing are entirely at odds.  Come with me now, gentle readers, to Houston, TX, like Austin, one of a few islands of virulent progressivism in a prosperous conservative, normal American Texan sea, where one Art Acevedo is the Chief of Police.  The Washington Post reports:

The three-day-long gun-debate beef this week [05-21/25-18] between Houston Police Chief Art Acevedo and the National Rifle Association’s Dana Loesch [pronounced “Lash”] started with a Facebook post.

Here we see the hallmarks of progressivism.  Chief Acevedo, who is sworn to obey the constitutions of the State of Texas and of the United States, is taking sides. He writes shortly after the Sante Fe, TX school shooting.   Sante Fe isn’t far from Houston.

He doesn’t care about the Second Amendment and those that defend it.  He’s commanded by God, which is odd, because progressives generally acknowledge no god but progressivism. He does know that gun rights aren’t bestowed by God, because God hasn’t told him that.  Oh, I see: God hasn’t commanded him, which he takes as a command in and of itself.  There is, accordingly, no natural, God-given right to self-defense, the right from which the Second Amendment springs.  He, like all good progressives manipulating emotions and angling for power after a school attack, ridicules those that approach God as He has commanded; through prayer.  To him, the only worthy prayer is for progressive gun control policies.  And of course, he ridicules those that believe harassing and disarming the law-abiding is no solution to criminal madness.

To what “hatred” does Acevedo refer? Obviously to President Trump and those that support him, to normal Americans that believe in and support the entire Constitution.  To all card-carrying progressives, there is no hate so vile as opposition to their policies.  Such people are “so-called people of faith,” and are to blame for violence like that at Sante Fe.

These are not the words of a humble, dedicated public servant, of a man dedicated to justice and the rule of law, but of a progressive tyrant, a man who believes his superior intellect and morality are license to rule over normals and force them to behave in the appropriate, progressive manner.  Enter NRA spokesman, Dana Loesch.

Acevedo’s ensuing Facebook post would be featured in headlines across the country.He started doing more and more interviews. And his comments about gun violence and gun control quickly caught the attention of the NRA. Acevedo, who has long been outspoken about his views on gun violence, has called for universal background checks, particularly to cover the ‘gun-show loophole,’ and stiffer penalties for failure to safely secure firearms in the home, among other things.

Much of this is nothing more than daily progressive talking points.  It was, however, the last assertion that raised the eyebrows of Loesch and other normal Americans.  Laws requiring guns in the home be “secured” were essentially invalidated in the 2008 Heller decision.  At the time, Washington DC law required all guns–in the home–to be rendered inoperable, making them useless for self-defense against felons vicious enough to commit hot burglaries–burglaries where residents are present.  Such laws don’t in any way deter or stop crime; they make life much easier for criminals.  Enforcing such laws always requires wholesale violation of the Fourth Amendment.

On May 21, an NRATV segment titled “Exposing Houston Police Chief Art Acevedo”  aired, hosted by Grant Stinchfield and featuring spokeswoman Dana Loesch. Stinchfield kicked off the segment claiming, ‘Art Acevedo’s solution to gun violence is to hold law-abiding gun owners responsible for crimes they don’t commit.

Chief Art Acevedo

The segment centered on comments that Acevedo made on CBS’s ‘Face the Nation,’ in which he highlighted the fact that the accused Santa Fe shooter took his dad’s shotgun and handgun from home to school. ‘We’ve got to make sure that everyone stores [their guns] in a responsible manner and that there are significant penalties when they fail to do so and people die as a result of that failure,’ Acevedo said.

Loesch pounced, focusing less on guns and more on immigration. She cited Acevedo’s opposition to Texas’s law requiring local jails to cooperate with federal immigration officials and allowing street cops to ask people about their immigration status, which Acevedo has said will make undocumented witnesses of crimes fearful of contacting police.

Loesch, characterizing Acevedo’s position as support for illegal immigration, said this made him a hypocrite.

Acevedo ‘doesn’t believe you have to enter [the country] legally,’ she said, ‘but thinks he has the right to go into every home in Texas and inspect how everybody’s storing their firearms? I don’t think so.

Chief Acevedo boldly ran away and immediately began threatening Loesch:

Dumb move.  Acevedo showed he is not remotely ready to take on Loesch:

Loesch also reached out to honest Houston officers.  She understands that higher ranking police administrators and the people that actually do police work are very different indeed.  Rank and file officers tend to abhor progressivism.  Their daily experience demonstrates how false and destructive those ideas are.

We don’t know what response she received, but one may be certain there are officers of the Houston Police Department that are assisting Loesch, because they know she’s on the side of the Constitution and the rule of law.  This particular tweet may well have caused Chief Acevedo to wake up–not become woke–to reality:

This is the Texas law to which she referred (I’ve left out portions of the law that don’t apply to this situation; take the link to read the whole statute):

Sec. 39.03. Official Oppression 

(a) A public servant acting under color of his office or employment commits an offense if he:

(1) intentionally subjects another to mistreatment or to arrest, detention, search, seizure, dispossession, assessment, or lien that he knows is unlawful;

(2) intentionally denies or impedes another in the exercise or enjoyment of any right, privilege, power, or immunity, knowing his conduct is unlawful; or [skip]

(b) For purposes of this section, a public servant acts under color of his office or employment if he acts or purports to act in an official capacity or takes advantage of such actual or purported capacity. [skip]

(d) An offense under this section is a Class A misdemeanor, except that an offense is a felony of the third degree if the public servant acted with the intent to impair the accuracy of data reported to the Texas Education Agency through the Public Education Information Management System (PEIMS) described by Section 42.006, Education Code, under a law requiring that reporting.

It appears Acevedo, or perhaps some of his underlings or city officials were just barely smart enough to understand they were hanging their rear ends out to be bitten off:

She described Acevedo’s beliefs as a ‘gun-grabbing philosophy’ — to which Acevedo strongly objected, saying he is a Second Amendment supporter who would fight any policy that confiscated law-abiding Americans’ guns. And then Loesch invited him to come on the show.

Acevedo said no. He also threatened that if NRATV continued to misrepresent his views, he would consider taking them to court. He would be watching them, he said — a comment that became the subject of Loesch’s Wednesday show.

‘A free people have the right to call to account elected or nominated political figures,’ she said on Twitter. ‘I will continue to exercise my free speech and do so. You can continue to threaten censorship and surveillance.

Acevedo, shortly thereafter, announced that he made a mistake by publically attacking Loesch, and was pretty much going to be shutting up.  This is, almost certainly, a temporary state of affairs.  He also noted:

I’m tired of people saying there’s nothing that can be done.

Acevedo is referring to the progressive surety that gun control, particularly dispossessing the law-abiding of the rights acknowledged by the Second Amendment, is the only thing that must be done.  He is, of course, wrong.  There are many things that can, and should, be done, including:

Unlike Acevedo, Loesch isn’t calling for governmental suppression of the Constitution, specifically, the First Amendment.  She’s merely asking for rational, adult restraint on the part of the media, sadly an impossibility.

Acevedo‘s claims that Loesch has lied about his positions are themselves lies.  Acevedo is a vocal supporter of sanctuary city policies and of illegal immigration.  He would not be the Chief of Police of Houston were he not.  He is also, despite his standard progressive claims of respect for the Second Amendment, very much a “gun grabber” in his policy pronouncements, and as such, he violates his oath of office.

But worse, he has demonstrated an abusive, imperious temperament, a state of mind unsuitable for a police chief, or even the newest patrolman. He thinks himself the ruler of the people of Houston, and threatens to use police resources and powers against those that criticize him.  He threatens to sue Dana Loesch for daring to criticize him, a public figure.  Such a man isn’t a man at all, and he’s certainly not fit for any position of public service.

Dana Loesch, as she commonly does, has done a significant public service by allowing Chief Acevedo to reveal exactly who and what he is.  People like Acevedo hate her not only because she’s right, but because she is particularly effective in supporting the Second Amendment, the Amendment Acevedo claims to champion.  I somehow doubt he’s asking God to bless and keep her, or anyone else that disagrees with him.

Some other SMM Dana Loesch-related articles:

NRA: Loesching The Left 

Dana Loesch: Layers of Editors and Fact Checkers  

Dana Loesch: Newsweek Attacks!