The following editorial is written by a retired Chief of Police and current staff writer for Law Enforcement Today.
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ACLU- The American “Civil Liberties” Union. Sounds like a good thing, right? After all, as Americans, one of the greatest rights we have as citizens is the right to “liberty.” And hey, the word “liberties” is right in their name, so one might expect that organization to actually stand up for ALL Americans’ liberties.
Unfortunately, the ACLU does nothing close to that. In fact, one might suggest they change their name to the “American Criminal Liberties Union.” Because when push comes to shove, that is exactly what they advocate for.
In an op-ed in we came across originally posted in Cosmopolitan, someone named Paige Fernandez, a so-called “Policing Policy Advisor” for the ACLU made the suggestion that “Defunding the Police Will Actually Make Us Safer.” Our question is, on what planet has Ms. Fernandez been living?
Before dealing with the abject stupidity of Fernandez’s premise, why don’t we look into exactly how the ACLU advocates for the “liberties” of the American people.
We’ll start with COVID and so-called “emergency orders” issued by mayors and governors, and most recently a vaccination mandate imposed by Joe Biden on federal employees and contractors.
In 2020, at the outset of the coronavirus pandemic, the American people were told we needed to hunker down for two weeks to “slow the spread.”
As two weeks turned into two months, and then a year, and now two years, the ACLU has remained silent. As the rights of the American people to exercise their First, Second, Fourth, Fifth, and other Amendments were laid waste, the ACLU said nothing…not a word.
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As Americans were arrested for not wearing a mask in a restaurant, masks which statistically do nothing to protect either the wearer or those they come in contact with, the ACLU remained silent.
When governors prohibited people from exercising their First Amendment right to worship as they please, the ACLU remained silent.
As the political class imposed mandates and restrictions on their citizens, yet chose to personally disregard those same rules because “rules are for the peons,” the ACLU remained silent.
And finally, as a cognitive mess of a president removed the ability of people to earn income in their chosen careers, in essence removing what is legally considered a “liberty interest” to support themselves and their families because they refused what they believed to be an experimental vaccine, it was nothing but crickets from the ACLU.
As that same government violated the Civil Rights Act of 1964 by refusing to accept religious exemptions, the ACLU said nothing.
Now, what of those who protested at the US Capitol on January 6, 2021? The government engaged in a dragnet even of those who committed no violence and participated in no criminal activity on that date, searching cellphone records and social media accounts, much of it in violation of the Fourth Amendment. Again, nothing from the ACLU.
As American citizens have been locked up in the Washington, DC equivalent of a gulag, some held in solitary confinement, prohibited from counseling with attorneys, and many held without bail for the equivalent of a misdemeanor, for over one year, the ACLU has said nothing.
Yet now, we are supposed to believe anything that comes out of that organization? In particular when, as crime explodes to levels not seen since the 1980s, we are told that further defunding the police will somehow make us safer?
In the op-ed, Fernandez started out with a bang, referring to “NYPD officers murder[ing] Eric Garner in New York City, Minneapolis police officers murder[ing] George Floyd.”
Yet, in the case of Garner, no officers were convicted and the civil rights division of the US Department of Justice refused to file civil rights charges against the involved officers.
In the case of Floyd, while the actions of former officer Derek Chauvin contributed partially to his death, he also had fatal amounts of meth and fentanyl in his system. Floyd already was, by all intents and purposes, a dead man walking.
Fernandez lost any and all credibility where she made the claim that the “first U.S. city police department was a slave patrol…” In the very citation she uses citing an article in Time magazine, the piece states, “The first publicly funded, organized police force with officers on duty full-time was created in Boston in 1838.”
The article goes on to say the police force was formed to help merchants safeguard their property. “These merchants came up with a way to save money by transferring to [sic] the cost of maintaining a police force to citizens…”
Were there some “slave patrols” in the South? Absolutely. But to make the claim that the first “organized police departments” were slave patrols is a lie.
The lack of credibility continues when she then alleges that modern-day police departments are used “to enforce Jim Crow,” a laughable and easily disprovable claim if there ever was one.
Among the so-called “Jim Crow” laws included matters such as segregating buses, schools, and movie theaters. Blacks were prohibited from living in white neighborhoods.
“Segregation was enforced for public pools, phone booths, hospitals, asylums, jails and residential homes for the elderly and handicapped,” according to History.com. Of course, Fernandez gives zero examples of any such mandates being enforced by modern-day police departments, precisely because they are not.
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She rails about police “cracking down on protests,” yet two years ago, peaceful protests were allowed to be held after Floyd’s death, with the only time police intervening was when the protests devolved into violent riots and anarchy, or where people’s lives were put in danger.
Did “some” police officers get carried away? Probably. But by and large, the police allowed the protests to occur unabated. We might also argue that far more police officers were injured in those “peaceful” protests than protesters.
Fernandez complains about what she calls the “astronomical amount of money that our governments spend on law enforcement,” while disregarding the “astronomical amount of money” we pay for our public education system, which somehow ranks 2nd globally despite the fact we rank 38th in math scores and 24th in science.
She claimed the United States spends “upward of $100 billion dollars” on law enforcement annually, not including federal grants. Yet, according to the National Center for Education Statistics, we spend seven and one-half times that amount–$762 billion annually as of 2017-2018—to rank 38th in math and 24th in science? Where exactly is money being wasted?
Fernandez railed against local governments “allocating funds for the police to acquire more militarized equipment,” yet ignored the fact that our southern border has been left wide open, now by the feckless Biden administration, which has police officers facing criminals that are as well-armed as they are.
She further suggested removing police officers from schools and replacing them with counselors instead. We might remind Ms. Fernandez that a counselor at the Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Connecticut was among the 26 people gunned down by a crazy person, which included 20 first-graders.
Fernandez then went on to cite cherry-picked statistics which she claims show that “police violence is actually a leading cause of death for black men.” Those statistics fail to consider that black men offend at a much higher rate than other races.
According to a study conducted by professors from Michigan State and Arizona State who analyzed fatal officer-involved shootings in 2015 and 2016, they found that “when adjusting for crime, we find no systematic evidence of anti-black disparities in fatal shootings.”
They further noted that “exposure to police given crime rate differences likely accounts for the higher per-capita rate of fatal police shootings for blacks…”
Fernandez cited “public health experts” who claim that “police violence is a public health issue.” By way of realizing the perspective these “experts” come from, they also in the same piece declared that “separation of migrant families at the US-Mexico border” isn’t a good thing either. So clearly we are dealing with group of unhinged leftists. The release notes that in 2016, police killed 1,091 people, however, provides no context to that number. Once again, cherry-picked statistics.
Declaring it a “public health emergency” of course allows the political class to use that as a pretext, just as they did with COVID-19, to implement draconian measures against police in the name of “public health.”
We suppose as an opinion piece Fernandez is entitled to her own opinion, but she is not entitled to her own truth. For example, she says, “Much of the work police do is merely engage in the daily harassment of black communities for minor crimes or crimes of poverty that shouldn’t be criminalized in the first place.” Does she provide statistics to that end? Of course not…it just sounds good.
Fernandez did get it somewhat right when she noted that only a small percentage of arrests made each year are for what are considered to be serious offenses, including murder, rape, and aggravated assault.
However she doesn’t take a number of factors into account, such as cooperation of witnesses, response time, number of officers assigned, and so on. Then there is the factor of what happens after arrests, when you have progressive Soros-funded DAs in cities such as New York, Philadelphia, Chicago, Los Angeles, and San Francisco who don’t prosecute pretty much anything short of murder.
She went on to complain that 95 percent of arrests are for “things like traffic violations, marijuana possession, unlawful assembly, and even removing a shopping cart from store premises.”
The last one? Yes, it’s a law on the books in Alabama, but as she does throughout her diatribe, Fernandez offers no proof that anyone was every arrested for that offense. She then complains that such “minor incidents” “don’t threaten everyday life but do lead to mass criminalization and incarceration.”
Let me explain something to Ms. Fernandez. Nobody is getting incarcerated for minor “traffic violations, marijuana possession, unlawful assembly” or “removing a shopping cart.” But hey, it sounds good, right?
But, as Fernandez said, we all know that “some arrests are made for doing nothing at all beyond being black.” This is absurd, but once again plays into the “cops are a bunch of systemically racist pigs” narrative, right?
Probably the most hilarious thing about this op-ed came next, when Fernandez said, “We have little evidence, if any to show that more police surveillance results in fewer crimes and greater public safety.” [emphasis added]
First of all, the fact that someone who has herself shown “little evidence, if any” throughout her op-ed for the ludicrous claims she makes is hilarious. Does she want some evidence? Look no further than New York City in the early 1980s.
In 1983, Rudy Giuliani was elected mayor of New York, and he along with police commissioners starting with Bill Bratton implemented the so-called “broken windows” theory of policing, which suggested that taking care of the minor crimes Fernandez complains about would help lead to an overall reduction not only in minor crime, but serious crimes. The program was an overwhelming success and was mirrored across the country by other police departments. There’s your evidence, Ms. Fernandez.
Yes, spending on law enforcement has increased dramatically, but so too has crime. In addition, local police departments are part of the front lines against international and domestic terrorism.
After Floyd’s death, a number of cities across the country, notably Los Angeles and New York city decided to “defund” their police departments. The result? An explosion in crime, so much so that in the case of Los Angeles, Mayor Eric Garcetti has refunded the LAPD most of the money which was cut.
Following are some suggestions Fernandez made:
- End enforcement of minor offenses that “drive street-level harassment,” suggesting decriminalizing marijuana (done already in a number of jurisdictions, along with legalization”
- End the presence of police in schools (see the aforementioned Sandy Hook reference)
- Develop mobile crisis services, peer crisis services and crisis hotlines and “warmlines” (already done in a number of cities)
- Ban pretextual stops and consent searches that act as common mechanisms for police to engage in racial profiling and circumvent legal standards (sorry toots, there is case law on consent searches and pretextual stops are already prohibited in most jurisdictions)
- Implement common sense, civilly and criminally enforceable legal constraints so there will be only rare instances in which officers are able to use force against community members [emphasis added]. Guess that depends on whose common sense you’re talking about, plus since we’ve already seen an explosion of police officer line of duty deaths last year and so far this year, it seems like officers are not able to use force often enough.
The original op-ed was written in June 2020, just after Floyd’s death and in the midst of the anti-police fervor that gripped the country.
Since that time, we have seen what effect the anti-police sentiment among people like Ms. Fernandez and groups such as the ACLU have had on crime rates in our country.
Cities like Philadelphia and even Indianapolis set records last year for the number of homicides, and we have seen young children…some as young as six months old…victimized by the violence encouraged by the demonization of police.
All across the country, Democrat-run cities, who led the charge in defunding their police have experienced a crime explosion not seen since the 1970s and 80s.
Defund the police? Terrible idea with deadly results.
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