The
sorry result of anti-cop activism.
This Saturday, Rafael Ramos and
Wenjian Liu were assassinated on on the streets of New York for wearing the
uniform that keeps those streets safe. Only one man, a felon who may have been
mentally ill, bears responsibility for robbing two young families of their
fathers and husbands.
But his heinous act has served to
focus attention on the rancid element of the recent anti-police protests that —
even when they haven’t included arson and assaults on cops – have been
lawless and replete with other hateful sentiments. Just last weekend, some
protesters in New York were infamously chanting, “What do we want? Dead cops.
When do we want them? Now.”
President Obama, Attorney General
Eric Holder, and New York mayor Bill de Blasio have all played their own
irresponsible parts; they have all lent moral support to occasionally violent
protests.
In Mayor de Blasio’s case, this has
created an almost unbridgeable divide between him and New York police officers
while inflaming tensions between black communities and the police. As recently
as this summer, the majority of black New Yorkers approved of the NYPD’s
performance. Approval dropped dramatically after Eric Garner’s death in Staten
Island; just recently, de Blasio tied that death to systematic police racism,
with no evidence for his intimations. Black communities’ distrust of the police
has deep, legitimate roots, but it has been receding for years — as crime has
dropped in those same communities, in part thanks to assiduous policing.
Yet as mayor, de Blasio immediately
entertained the entreaties of anti-cop activists and has repeatedly given voice
to unfounded allegations of racial bias in the police department. The most
notorious of his allies is Al Sharpton, a man who has never fully repudiated
his once open contempt for cops and our legal system (and who, considering his
finances, may privately maintain some of that contempt for legality).
The problems began before de Blasio
even looked like a viable candidate in the 2013 mayor’s race. He ran the most
anti-cop campaign of the entire Democratic field, repeatedly promising to fire
a police commissioner, Ray Kelly, who oversaw falling crime rates and had
majority approval among each racial group in New York. De Blasio’s
distinguishing campaign message was that the department’s
stop-question-and-frisk policies intentionally target New Yorkers of color,
featuring in one ad a discussion with his young, black son about that alleged
discrimination. (Members of minority populations are stopped at rates lower
than the rate at which they commit crime, and live in neighborhoods where more
police are and should be stationed.)
De Blasio’s approach amounts to
asking thousands of cops to risk their lives every day while slandering their
behavior and intentions. That dissatisfaction among the rank and file didn’t
reach fever pitch until Saturday is partly a tribute to police commissioner
Bill Bratton, who has done well in trying political circumstances.
President Obama has been reading
from the same playbook as de Blasio — elevating Al Sharpton himself, extending
support to the protests, and operating from the dangerous prima facie
assumption that policing in America is systematically biased. His Justice
Department, filled with anti-cop lawyers, has dictated the practices of police
departments around the country with little or no justification.
There is a kernel of truth to some
of President Obama’s and Mayor de Blasio’s comments: Community relations are
crucial to policing, and in most places, New York included, they could be
better. There are plenty of activists who are working for sensible reforms, and
law enforcement is open to them.
Instead, the president and the mayor
have alienated law enforcement with sops to radical activists. Communities
deserve good policing, and good police deserve cooperative communities. Obama’s
and de Blasio’s divisiveness delivers neither.
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