Posted on 04/28/2021 8:57:48 AM PDT by Kaslin
resident Biden is returning to the Barack Obama playbook of “reforming” municipal police departments by forcing multi-year federal court “consent decrees” down their throats -- a strategy that makes it extremely difficult for those departments to hire and retain good officers, or to administer their agencies in accord with the needs of the communities they serve.
Of course, as with everything being undertaken by this Administration, it is all about race and politics, not good policing. Police departments in Minneapolis and Louisville are but the latest recipients of this federal intervention.
It is noteworthy, though not often noted, that both of these cities have been under Democrat Party control for more than three-quarters of a century. One reason why left-wing propagandists, such as Black Lives Matter and the mainstream media fail to note this anomaly, is that it invites the uncomfortable question of how, with Democrats at the helm of these cities for so long, police departments under their purview descended into the alleged hotbed of systemic racism that now warrants federal oversight by the notoriously heavy-handed Civil Rights Division at the Department of Justice.
A key question that should be asked, but of course is not, is what precisely is to be accomplished by Democrat bureaucrats in Washington, D.C. that has not been possible for Democrats locally across nearly eight decades of control.
Investigating and prosecuting real cases of alleged civil rights violations by police officers is a legitimate focus for the Department of Justice, especially in cases for which there is no adequate prosecution by state authorities. Were this the sole focus by the Civil Rights Division, it might constitute an appropriate use of federal law and resources. However, this Administration, just as the Obama Administration before it, instead looks to deploy federal resources as a bludgeon with which to publicly humiliate police as a whole, rather than as a scalpel to delicately remove those few bad apples.
Here is how the scam works. The Justice Department opens a civil rights investigation into a local police department on the pretext that its officers “target” young black men or some other identifiable category. It always is relatively easy to find some “evidence” of civil rights issues on which to file a lawsuit in federal court against the local police department. Justice Department lawyers then leverage that potentially lengthy and costly proceeding to force local departments to consent to legally binding court decrees that place them under federal control for years, in some cases 10 years or more.
Such consent decrees rob local police chiefs and elected city officials of the ability to establish and administer hiring and training programs, and to set priorities that meet the needs of the communities they serve, as opposed to priorities deemed worthy by lawyer-bureaucrats in Washington. With federal monitors looking over the shoulder of every officer in such departments, it is no wonder that individual officers back away from proactive policing and that the departments receive fewer qualified applicants and suffer higher rates of retirement.
What do citizens get for all of this -- police departments with fewer and less well-trained officers, whose performance is measured not by local needs, but by the “woke” standards mandated by liberal lawyers and bureaucrats far away in the nation’s capital. Any true reforms that might result from such programs move at the glacial pace favored by bureaucrats not subject to local voters, and whose ultimate goal is to maintain control and their respective budgets as long as possible.
This is nothing more than a charade so Democrats in D.C. can make it look like they are taking action to cover decades of failures by local Democrats in city leadership.
Yes, there are problems in America’s law enforcement, and as entities populated by real, fallible human beings, there always will be. However, employing bureaucratically conceived and driven national templates to “solve” deeply complex problems between diverse communities and police, is both foolhardy and ultimately dangerous.
Any meaningful effort to resolve today’s problems in community policing must focus on core fiscal, cultural, and social issues, employing solutions founded on local needs and concerns rather than performative Beltway meddling. In other words, exactly what this Administration does not want.
Since Obama-Holder, the political rhetoric and coordinated media attack on local police has been in overdrive. These are police that are out of the control of Fed.gov, are selected and administered locally.
You will notice at the same time that the dozens of Federal “law enforcement” never face scrutiny, are quite protected, are never doxxed, nor have leaks made on them. There are never calls for defunding or oversight.
See a pattern here?
now hiring. only SJWs need apply.
At the same time, police oversight is going from localities to the federal government.
How hard is this to figure out?
This author is not Bagpipe Bob Barr, the Quisling.
The author is Bob Barr, former Congressman and the only eligible Presidential candidate on my 2008 ballot.
I didn’t say he was. There are probably hundreds of Bob Barr’s around for all we know.
We had a new police chief here that came in from a big city department that has undergone that process. There was a case here involving something racial that he tried to pursue and he didn’t get anywhere. As soon as he had to play by local instead of federal rules he was out of there, left in a huff. We have a new police chief now, both men are black, but this new chief has been around for years, he wasn’t brought in from somewhere else. Things calmed down again with the change in chiefs. What I learned from this leadership switch is that this tactic isn’t about race, it’s about federalizing. The new chief is all about what is going on street level locally and the other guy was most notable for his embrace of the political. The new chief probably knows every at risk teen in the city and knows their names and I’d hazard a guess that this wasn’t true of the other guy. I do think there is something up at DOJ with this, someone is building a power base for their own agenda and they are using local communities tax money to fund it.
I was just commenting for the benefit of anyone who might assume it was Quisling Bob Barr, Vile Creature of the Deep State that wrote this.
Consent decrees are guilty pleas.
It isn’t as simple as that, but it is a way to enforce rules (and give exemptions) out side of the legal framework.
My first exposure was in environmental regulations.
Dear Federal Government:
We are sorry to inform you that your civil rights commissar assigned to our district is dead. While touring the backwaters of our district, the jeep hit a bump and he was ejected from the vehicle and into a lake. A bull alligator took him under the water pretty quick and twisted him into an edible pretzel. We managed to save his hat, and we return it to you with all the respect we can muster.
Please send us another certified inspector, as we miss his jolly demeanor and quiet humor.
Sincerely.
The sheriff and his 2,000-man deputized and armed citizens.
“Federal ‘Consent Decrees’ Make Policing Problems Worse Not Better”
Well, duh. Who could imagine that it would be otherwise?
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