The classic saying is that a conservative is a liberal who’s been mugged. Judging from how many liberals have been saying how much they hate cops, I would guess that very few have been mugged in recent years. Chalk that up to falling crime rates, which in turn was helped along by aggressive “broken windows” policing like that which helped bring crime under control in Guliani-era New York City.
Given how many on the identity politics left were chanting “Dead Cops” in recent weeks, it looks like they’ve forgotten (or simply don’t care) what it took to bring those crime rates down. Which brings us to the recent police shootings.
Former NY Police Commissioner Howard Safir noted: “Michael Brown and Eric Garner died resisting arrest. Officers Rafael Ramos and Wenjian Liu died doing their job. It is a very important distinction.” Further:
The national dialogue on proper and effective policing has been totally distorted. Activists purporting to represent the majority of the black community have been bolstered by a 24 hour news cycle that gives them unwarranted credibility. I do not believe for one minute that Al Sharpton represents the feelings of most hardworking, law abiding black American families. I know through dozens of community meetings during my time as NYC Police Commissioner that what the black community wants most is what we all want—a safe environment in which to live their lives.
Snip.
Does that mean that there are not serious incidents of police abuse or misjudgment? Of course there are. When they take place we should investigate them thoroughly and prosecute and punish those who committed the wrong doing. We should not burn down buildings and murder police officers.
When Ismaaiyl Abdulah Brinsley brutally executed Officers Ramos and Liu he did so in an atmosphere of permissiveness and anti-police rhetoric unlike any that I have seen in 45 years in law enforcement. The rhetoric this time is not from the usual suspects, but from the Mayor of New York City, the Attorney General of the United States, and even the President. It emboldens criminals and sends a message that every encounter a black person has with a police officer is one to be feared. Nothing could be further from the truth. We will never know what was in the mind of Brinsley when he shot officers Ramos and Liu. However we do know that he has seen nothing but police bashing from some of the highest officials in the land.
You could chalk some of that bashing up to the usual Democratic hostility to working class men, but this goes much deeper. The radicals who now make up the ideological core of of the Democratic Party never got over their hatred of the police, still viewing them as agents of oppression and “The Man”–even though, with Obama and Holder in office, they are in fact “The Man” themselves these days. But who could have possibly imagined that the same activists who chanted “Free Mumia!” would one day chant that they wanted “dead cops,” or that the members of Occupy would delight in publicly defecating on cop cars? Also remember that Obama’s pals in the Weather Underground were always far more adept at killing policemen like Brian McDonnell and Waverly Brown than they ever were at effecting political change.
The likes of Obama, Holder and Sharpton have continually inflamed racial tensions by hyping otherwise nationally insignificant stories like Trayvon Martin and Michael Brown in order to continue milking minority grievances and keep them voting Democratic. When it comes to standing with grievance-mongering Social Justice Warriors, or standing with cops, the Democratic Party elite has chosen to stand with the Al Sharptons of the world.
If Democrats want a rerun of the sixties and early seventies, they shouldn’t be surprised when voters in 2016 treat them the same way they treated George McGovern in 1972.
Tags: Al Sharpton, Crime, Democrats, Ismaaiyl Abdulah Brinsley, police, Tra, Weather Underground