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Tag:

Police

BlogFrom the Desk of Bob Barr

Obama’s Drive To Impose “Common Core” On Law Enforcement

by lgadmin February 17, 2016
written by lgadmin

From the Ferguson Police Department’s first public statement about the police-involved shooting of Michael Brown in August 2014, the town of Ferguson, Missouri was doomed. Like Newton’s First Law of Motion, the shooting started a cascading series of events that continues a year and a half later.  The rounds of looting, rioting, protesting and media circuses, has morphed into a massive lawsuit filed against the small suburban town by the U.S. Department of Justice.

If one accepts the allegations in Attorney General Loretta Lynch’s lawsuit, Ferguson is nothing but a teeming hotbed of racial hatred and official incompetence; the only solution for which is federal control.  In the government’s eyes, the town has no regard whatsoever for the Constitution and laws of this country, and has engaged in widespread and systemic violation of civil rights.  Tough stuff, indeed; but the Department’s approach reflects more an example of how to address a manageable problem with a wrecking ball than a tool kit.

Tragic as it was, there was nothing so remarkable or unique about the shooting of Brown that justifies this action by the Justice Department. The aggressive and authoritarian manner in which the Department has hounded the Ferguson Police Department over the past 18-months is far different from the way in which previous presidents and federal prosecutors, including myself, dealt with incidents in which law enforcement officers or departments violated individuals’ civil rights. By vigorously prosecuting such cases individually as warranted, prosecutors and the Department of Justice itself were able to hold the officer or officers accountable; and without attacking entire departments or needlessly imposing federal government control over local government responsibilities.

For U.S. Attorney General Loretta Lynch’s Department of Justice, however, control – not justice – is the real goal; and Ferguson has become ground zero for its crusade to scrutinize and punish law enforcement officers and departments for perceived racial injustices. In effect, the Department is seeking to implement its own form of “Common Core” for Law Enforcement, wherein local control is stripped away in favor of federal policing standards that have been packaged into what may be “politically correct” on the surface, but have little actual impact on the troubling issues that linger in the criminal justice system.

To an Administration obsessed with “optics” more than genuine reform, this façade may fulfill its objectives. However, for those who genuinely care about individual liberty and constitutional conduct within the justice system, they actually are poisoning public debate about criminal justice reform and exacerbating the already strained tensions between citizens, police and the federal government.

By showing that it cares about civil liberties by attacking police, the Obama Administration is making it harder to protect civil liberties.

For the first time in decades, for example, we have an opportunity to achieve substantial and lasting criminal justice reform through federal legislation. Reforms that would help restore civil liberties to the criminal prosecution process while providing much-needed relief to an overcrowded and costly prison system, currently are pending in the Congress. These measures enjoy strong bipartisan support, including among policy organizations ranging from the leftist Center for American Progress to conservative FreedomWorks. It is one of those rare scenarios in which Democrats, Republicans and the President are in at least partial agreement on an issue that actually strengthens civil liberties.

Unfortunately, without Administration support and in the absence of public demand for passing these reforms, the pending bills have languished without votes to send them to the President for signature.  Ironically, the Justice Department’s highly visible crusade against Ferguson (and other police departments) is much to blame for this failure.

By antagonizing police departments and politicizing police-involved shootings of minorities, the Obama Administration has turned the conversation about “justice reform” into a false dichotomy between support of police on the one hand, or social justice groups like “Black Lives Matter” on the other. In such a polarized environment, real efforts at reform, such as those pending in Congress, are given nary a thought, much less active support from those members of Congress who can help win their passage. Meanwhile, individual Democrats and Republicans who oppose such efforts are undermining the bills before they ever reach the floor.

The clock is ticking on criminal justice reform, and an opportunity such as this for genuine, lasting reform is truly once-in-a-lifetime. If Obama cares to salvage at least a sliver of a notable legacy, he should abandon his shortsighted and misguided drive to place local police departments under Uncle Sam’s thumb, and help shift the public conversation back to substantive reforms that really matter.

 

Originally published here via townhall.com

February 17, 2016 0 comment
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From the Desk of Bob Barr

Have We Learned Nothing In The 23 Years Since The Rodney King Riots?

by Liberty Guard Author August 20, 2014
written by Liberty Guard Author

It has been nearly a quarter of a century since the bloody “Rodney King” riots ripped through Los Angeles. In the years since those horrific events in 1991, police departments across the country have been faced with numerous racially-charged altercations – including many involving police shootings of civilian suspects. During that same time, American taxpayers at all levels of government have seen hundreds of billions of their dollars spent to improve law enforcement training, procedures, and equipment. But, have we learned anything?

If what is unfolding in Ferguson, Missouri following the August 9th fatal shooting of unarmed, black teenager Michael Brown by a white police officer is any indication, all that training, money and equipment has been utterly wasted.

In less than one week, Ferguson transformed from a small and largely unknown St. Louis suburb into an occupied territory in the middle of a raging warzone. The act that initially sparked this unfortunate series of events — the shooting death of Brown – was quickly overtaken by an embarrassing series of missteps by political and law enforcement officials. The manner in which these bumbling officials issued conflicting and inconsistent statements and took similarly indecisive actions, serves as a lesson in how not to handle such an incident.

One of these factors, of course, is the danger posed by the over-militarization of civilian law enforcement. This highly problematic process moved into high gear with the 1993 ATF-Branch Davidian confrontation outside Waco, Texas, and accelerated rapidly after the 911 terror attacks. In recent days, many commentators and experts have focused on this very real and continuing threat to our civil liberties (I have written in the past about this alarming problem). Still, the infatuation many local and state law enforcement agencies have with whiz-bang military firepower, vehicles, clothing and mindset shows little sign of abating.

As serious as is the problem with over-militarizing domestic law enforcement in 21st Century America, in a broader sense it is a merely a symptom of an even more fundamental disease plaguing law enforcement organizations across the country and at all levels of government: the failure to understand, remember, and act upon the foundational principles on which our constitutionally-based federal republic was formed. These First Principles include, among others of course, that: ultimate authority in America resides in the citizenry, not government agents; government exists to serve the People, not vice versa; the Bill of Rights provides checks on government power rather than serving as a road map for government to erode individual liberty; and, federal government powers are defined and limited.

Occasional lapses in such understandings can be tolerated, but when married to the utter incompetence such as displayed by those involved in trying to control the discord in Ferguson, it is a situation guaranteed to worsen, to spread, and ultimately to feed precedent for further mischief by those always sniffing around for such opportunities.

When elected and appointed officials forget the Constitution and what it stands for, bad situations turn worse. The cast of characters reflecting this phenomenon now includes (among others) the mayor and police chief in Ferguson, and the U.S. Attorney General with his heavy-handed and premature move to seize control of the local situation.

It is said that “nature abhors a vacuum.” The modern corollary to that time-tested truism, however, is “government loves a vacuum” because it provides opportunity to step in and assert or take control. This is what happens time and again in these situations; Ferguson is but the latest example.

When local and state officials exhibited indecision and vacillation in their statements and actions in the immediate aftermath of Brown’s death, it created a vacuum. The national media, of course, rushed in to define and hype the situation to its benefit. This was followed closely by the usual “civil rights” champions elbowing their way to the camera banks — the Revs. Jackson and Sharpton, and the “New” Black Panthers. The unraveling of the situation accelerated quickly thereafter.

Even after it became obvious to even casual observers that initial comments and actions responding to the Brown shooting were mishandled, those same local and state officials continued to bungle their statements and actions; wavering between toughness and choruses of “Kumbaya,” and between detachment and forceful engagement. Not surprisingly, Uncle Sam recognized an opportunity to take control, and strode in with new directives, more “observers,” dozens of FBI agents, and the Attorney General himself. The feds claim to have taken the high moral ground; and, in so doing have once again diminished and pushed aside that authority which under our constitutional framework is supposed to be paramount – state and local government.

If we the People allow this inversion of constitutional power and federalism again to stand, it will confirm that we, too, have learned nothing in the past generation.

August 20, 2014 0 comment
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