The Police Problem is Actually a Progressive Problem

Publisher's note:  As always, Tim Dunkin has tackled a huge problem, one that a lot of people are thinking about, but no one has put into words.  Because it is a bit long I was going to make it a two part series, however I felt doing so might lose the interest of some readers and I believe it too important to risk that.  I encourage all of our readers to take a few moments and read this very on point article.  And then think about it. 

Tim Dunkin:  Quis custodiet ipsos custodes? (Who guards the guardians?) – Juvenal

Honest observers in this country have to admit that we have a police problem that is increasingly growing more serious.  While some of the stories that have come out about police brutality and police overreach have clearly been invented or exaggerated by the Left for the purposes of inflaming racial tensions and undermining American civic stability, there are nevertheless a large number of incidents in recent years which cannot simply be wishcast away.  The warrantless, no-knock, early morning, heavily-armed SWAT raid for even the most minor of things is becoming the norm all across America.  Though many on the Right want to make excuses or attribute the increasing prevalence of these types of incidents to “a few bad apples,” the fact of the matter is that the “policing problem” is becoming obvious enough that concern about it is no longer confined to a few “fringe” libertarian or “anti-police” sites, but is being recognized by more mainstream conservative outlets.  Police militarization (which is as much an issue of mindset as it is of equipment), heavy-handedness, and bureaucratization are leading to a situation where America is beginning to look less and less like the land of the free, and more and more like an authoritarian police state.  

This is apparent from the news we see coming out of Wisconsin about the “John Doe” investigations conducted by hyper-partisan opponents of Scott Walker.  In a plain and obvious effort to silence and intimidate conservatives and other supporters of Scott Walker, Milwaukee district attorney John Chisholm used the extraordinary (and soon to be found unconstitutional) powers granted by declaring an investigation a “John Doe” case.  “John Doe” investigations, under Wisconsin law, allow prosecutors to bypass the usual grand jury requirements, replacing empanelled citizens with a “supervising judge” (who, in this case, was also a hyper-partisan Democrat opponent of Scott Walker).  The prosecutor is also allowed to keep targets of the investigation a secret, and said targets are restrained by gag orders from speaking to anyone – even friends or neighbors – about anything that has happened to them during the investigation.  If this sounds like the perfect set up for a star chamber, then you know human nature better than many.

That is, of course, exactly what happened – and this is where the police come in. While pursuing this technically-legal-yet-grossly-immoral-and-unconstitutional investigation, the prosecutor’s office sent in heavily-armed SWAT teams, utilizing pre-dawn raids and helicopters, to roust several conservative supporters of Scott Walker in their own homes, pointing guns at them, scaring their children, defaming their reputations in front of their neighbors, seizing all of their financial and other personal records, and then ordering them not to talk about it to anyone on pain of imprisonment for “contempt of court.”  The only reason we know about these raids is because one of the victims finally, and courageously, violated the unconstitutional gag order and broke the news wide open.  

What could have been accomplished merely by sending in a couple of county sheriff’s deputies with a subpoena and a search warrant to politely knock on their doors and serve the paperwork was instead done in a way that was purposefully intended to be psychologically and physically intimidating.  And much more dangerously, too.  What if one of the victims – many of whom initially believed they were facing a (non-state initiated) criminal home invasion - had shot at the police thinking they were defending themselves from armed robbers, and were killed, or killed a police officer, as a result?  These people were no threat to the police.  They weren’t going to come out guns blazing should a deputy simply serve them papers.  SWAT was there simply for the repression and intimidation factors, nothing more.

Some might ask why I am criticizing the police, when it is a petty, out-of-control prosecutor who was the cause of all of this.  Yes and no, and I’ll get to the issue with the prosecutor in a moment.  There is no issue of “a few bad apples” here.  Entire police departments and sheriff’s offices signed off on these.  The fact remains that each police officer who participated in one of these raids had a moral choice before him.  He could do the right thing (which was, in this case, to not follow the orders given to him), or he could do the wrong thing – and they each chose to do the wrong thing.  Yes, they may well have suffered repercussions for refusing these grossly unconstitutional orders.  Yes, their jobs and their pensions might have been on the line.  But you know what?  What about the people whose lives they helped to turn upside down and nearly destroy?  Don’t those folks count for anything?  Cowardice and cupidity are no excuses for this.  And the argument that they were “simply following orders” has not had any moral credibility since Nuremburg in 1945.  

But yet, the ultimate fault lies not with the police officers.  Rather, it lies with those, like AG Chisholm, who give them the unconstitutional, socially-destructive, totalitarian orders in the first place.  And this brings us to the root of the matter – the “police problem” in America is really a “progressive problem.”

I’ve pointed out before that those on the Left absolutely LOVE the police state.   They love the idea of thousands upon thousands of laws, statutes, regulations, rules, and mandates that they get to enforce on you and me in their efforts to create their “progressive utopia.”  They also love the power that comes with having to have the extensive police state apparatus in place to enforce all these rules.  And the power to make you set aside “green space” when you expand your driveway is also the power to send in SWAT should you fail to do so.  You think I’m exaggerating?  Then why did Homeland Security recently send in a SWAT team to seize a Land Rover from a North Carolina woman because it didn’t have the correct emission controls?  And they did the same thing 39 other times with other Land Rover owners.  

So what happens when you give “progressives” power to secretly investigate ideological opponents and other wrongthinkers, and give them access to SWAT teams to do it with?  Just look at Wisconsin for your answer.

So it stands to reason that if we want to solve the “police problem” in America, then we’re going to need to solve the progressive problem.  We’re going to need to expose them, clog up their system, and do whatever is necessary to nullify and subvert the power they have and their ability to use it.  

But there are a lot of things that the police themselves can do to help, if they really want to regain and then keep the trust and respect of the citizenry as a whole.  And that is something that the police need to be concerned about.  I’d like to address my comments now to any law enforcement officers who may be reading this.

To be sure, the crooks, kooks, and criminals out there have never liked the police, and they never will.  But the problem for the police today is that the mainstay of their support – the largely (but not exclusively) white middle class that is concerned with law and order and social stability – is rapidly eroding, and this is happening because of the overreaches and heavy-handedness that many police departments are adopting as their standard operating procedures. People see SWAT busting into somebody’s house because the homeowner had a dispute with a neighbor about something (and this has happened), and the thought at the back of their mind is  “that could be me next.”  

There is a big, big difference between “rule of law” and “just follow the rules.”  When the rules are unconstitutional, when the rules are being enforced in such a way that the Constitution – the ultimate basis of our laws – is trampled on, this undermines our civil society and contributes to the very instability that the rank-and-file police officer believes he is fighting against.  Simply put, “just follow the rules, because we said so and will punish you severely for not doing so” is not the same thing as “law and order.”  Law and order needs to start with the officers of the state abiding by the ultimate document that makes their positions possible in the first place.

I realize that because they are headed up at the top by “progressive” kooks and wackos, many police departments have received training that teaches you that people who assert their rights and who believe in the Constitution are “dangerous, right wing terrorists.”  But the rank-and-file police officer needs to understand: we are not your enemies.  The law-abiding gun-owners, the constitutionalists who want a rule of law system, the people who just want to be left alone to live our lives in peace – we are not your enemies.  We WANT a stable society.  We WANT a civil society that functions for the benefit of all.  We would support you wholeheartedly if you would respect our rights.  

Look to the example of this sheriff in Oklahoma who encouraged a young man in his county, who has stopped two separate felonies via citizen’s arrest using his legally-owned firearm, to tell his story to the media.  This sheriff gets it.  Milwaukee County (Wisconsin) Sheriff David Clarke, who calls guns “the great equalizer” and has publicly encouraged county residents to arm themselves against criminals, gets it.  They know that the law-abiding gun owners can be the policeman’s best friend – he can help to stop crimes because the police can’t be everywhere at once.  By some estimates, law-abiding gun owners stop or prevent nearly half a million serious crimes a year.  Why wouldn’t you want that on your side?

So what do I think the police should do?  Stand up to the progressives giving you the unconstitutional orders and who are using you as a tool of repression.  Refuse to obey their unlawful orders, and form a “thin blue line” in support of each other.  Make your cases directly to your communities – seek our support, and we’ll support you when we know you’re doing the right thing.  Respect our God-given rights affirmed by the Constitution, instead of the scurrilous words of left-wing politicians who hate you anywise, who used to call you “pigs” and “the fuzz” back before they got their hands onto political power and became your masters.

But there are other things as well.  I would exhort police officers in America to revisit the way they think about the “civilians” in their communities.  This would start by realizing that “civilian” is entirely the wrong term to use with us – since you are civilians too.  Our civil society is not made to be enforced by a military.  You are not a military.  In most places that are not hard-core slums in the inner cities, you are not occupying military forces who should feel like there is this sharply-delineated distinction between yourselves and us, between “the good guys” and “the civilians.”  Most of us “civilians” – especially those of us who are law-abiding guns owners and constitutionalists and so forth – are the good guys too.  Our nation has a Posse Comitatus Act on the books for a reason.  

Please, please, please overcome the bureaucratic mindset that wants to boil everything down to the most basic one-size-fits-all approach.  A law-abiding gun owner out in the exurbs going to his job as a plumber or factory worker, the law-abiding inner city African-American trying to live his life but existing in fear because he’s been disarmed while the gangs have not – these folks are not the same as the thugs and gangbangers and career criminals.  They shouldn’t be treated the same.  Common sense needs to enter into the equation, regardless of all the “policies” and “procedures” put into place by left-wing social justice warriors.

An armed robber who just held up a bank and shot a guard, and who is holed up inside a house daring you to come get him – that is a situation for the use of SWAT.  Serving a warrant for someone delinquent on his child support payments is not.  There needs to be some review, some oversight, some stepping back and saying, “Is this really the best way to handle this situation?”  

By the most recent estimates I have seen, there are nearly 270 million firearms in the hands of almost 100 million American citizens.  Because of this, the law-abiding gun owners (who are the vast, vast, vast majority) could be your worst problem, or your best friends.  We want to be your friends.  We really do.  We don’t like what Eric Holder and the rest of the police-baiters in D.C. are doing to defame you.  We want to support you.  But we want you to do the right thing and respect our liberties and our lives, too.  

If you are ever ordered to begin confiscations of legally-owned guns or to round up law-abiding gun-owners or other patriots – don’t obey those orders.  It won’t go well for anyone involved, neither us nor you, and you won’t be able to get even a small fraction of us or them before word gets out.  Remember the Constitution and obey it.  

We want to support you because police officers are the ones who have sworn to the duty of maintaining our free, civil society, who help to guarantee the stability that makes our way of life possible instead of us being another Somalia rife with warlords and vendettas and all the rest.  Please do not allow the left-wingers to use you to recreate another Nazi Germany, replete with secret police, midnight raids on dissidents and the disfavored, and repression for those who “don’t follow the rules.”  And make no mistake – that is exactly what the radical Left would love to see happen here in America.  Stand tall and do what’s right, even if it goes against the progressives and left-wingers and those who think to destroy our nation and rebuild it in their own twisted image.