By T.B. Lefever, OpsLens:
If you look at the archived Obama administration outline and vision for the country on the whitehouse.gov site, you’ll see that there were five main areas of focus. They are listed as follows: Healthcare, Climate and Energy, American Leadership, Economic Progress, and Equality and Social Progress. If you look at the whitehouse.gov page under the Trump Administration as it stands today, the policy points are America First Energy Plan, America First Foreign Policy, Bringing Back Jobs and Growth, Making Our Military Strong Again, Standing Up for Our Law Enforcement Community, and Trade Deals Working for All Americans. Love it or hate it, the official White House site is looking a lot different these days.
As a student of politics, I could weigh in on the fact that environmentalists are losing their minds over the absence of climate change as a priority issue for number 45. I could question why there is no official policy listed that might shed some light on the repealing and replacing of the Affordable Care Act, which had been touted as a high priority for both the Republican Party and the Trump campaign during the election. I could go on at length about how the new administration is boldly and explicitly showing the intent to rank our nation and its citizens above all others in the way they make deals as they pertain to each of the six areas of concern they plan to address — which is a breath of fresh air for me, personally — but instead, I’ll stick to what I know best and focus my attention on police-related issues.
I was very pleasantly surprised to see the bullet point “Standing Up for Our Law Enforcement Community” as one of the “big six” issues declared as main priorities for the Trump administration. To be honest, seeing my comrades and I make the list felt like being wrapped in a warm blanket. Straight from the website, this is the official statement regarding what “Standing Up for Our Law Enforcement Community” means to our new president:
One of the fundamental rights of every American is to live in a safe community. A Trump administration will empower our law enforcement officers to do their jobs and keep our streets free of crime and violence. The Trump administration will be a law and order administration. President Trump will honor our men and women in uniform, and will support their mission of protecting the public. The dangerous anti-police atmosphere in America is wrong. The Trump administration will end it.
The Trump administration is committed to reducing violent crime. In 2015, homicides increased by 17% in America’s fifty largest cities. That’s the largest increase in 25 years. In our nation’s capital, killings have risen by 50 percent. There were thousands of shootings in Chicago last year alone.
Our country needs more law enforcement, more community engagement, and more effective policing.
Our job is not to make life more comfortable for the rioter, the looter, or the violent disrupter. Our job is to make life more comfortable for parents who want their kids to be able to walk the streets safely. Or the senior citizen waiting for a bus. Or the young child walking home from school.
Supporting law enforcement means supporting our citizens’ ability to protect themselves. We will uphold Americans’ Second Amendment rights at every level of our judicial system.
President Trump is committed to building a border wall to stop illegal immigration, to stop the gangs and the violence, and to stop the drugs from pouring into our communities. He is dedicated to enforcing our border laws, ending sanctuary cities, and stemming the tide of lawlessness associated with illegal immigration.
Supporting law enforcement also means deporting illegal aliens with violent criminal records who have remained within our borders.
It is the first duty of government to keep the innocent safe, and President Donald Trump will fight for the safety of every American, and especially those Americans who have not known safe neighborhoods for a very long time.
There’s obviously a lot to get into here. The administration’s stated mission to “empower,” “support,” and even “honor” American law enforcement while performing their duty to “keep streets free of crime and violence” largely means we’ve got to take the muzzle off the sheepdog and let him or her start fighting the wolves again. The “Ferguson Effect” is real. As American cops watched the unimpeded rioting, a shifting of their government’s stance from being supportive to opposing, and a dwindling of their job security, they stopped proactively policing. “I’m just going to handle my 911 calls and drive around” became a popular policing strategy while violent crimes and property crimes trended upward in startling numbers as a result of lacking numbers of self-initiated suspicious persons and traffic stops.
The malicious prosecution against the Baltimore police officers involved in the Freddy Gray case was a seminal moment that made officers more fearful of winding up in jail than winding up dead from an on-the-job incident. If Ferguson began the transition from police officer to security guard, Baltimore solidified it. I don’t expect the Trump administration to foster that type of knee-jerk reaction in the next four to eight years.
Think about this: it speaks volumes that President Trump has been making personal phone calls to the surviving family members of slain cops both during and after the election, while President Obama became known for making public statements and phone calls to the families of men killed by police instead. While the White House lights up different colors for different causes, such as pink for breast cancer awareness, red for AIDS cure, rainbow for gay marriage, etc., President Obama’s administration never once lit it up blue for the police. He had eight years to do this. I’m looking forward to that day when the White House finally does take a blue hue, if only for symbolic reasons.
I’ve written at length about the consent decrees and the federal intrusion afoot in our local and state police agencies. Agencies already under federal direction and supervision will remain there, as consent decrees do not expire with the changing of administrations. They expire after a previously determined number of years passes, or in some cases, when the Department of Justice determines they are satisfied with the changes made. This judgment will ultimately come down to incoming Attorney General Jeff Sessions, should he overcome the efforts made to block his appointment. In instances where there was actual widespread corruption, a culture of unprofessionalism, and a track record of poor service to the community, there is an obvious need for improvement. I trust that a Sessions Department of Justice will be able to weed through a pile of agencies with existing consent decrees under questionable judgments made by a largely non-supportive Obama administration to find those that actually need federal incursion to run properly.
I have confidence in the incoming administration’s judgment simply because their small government stance on most issues means they inherently don’t want to expanding federal power over local governments. Logically, this leads me to arrive at the assumption that the new leadership will only pursue consent decrees in the most obvious and necessary cases, rather than as a killing of two birds with one stone-style move where both an opportunistic power grab and a quenching of a thirst for the politically correct response to an incident are achieved.
The new administration’s statement ties in enforcing laws against illegal immigration that are already in existence in an effort to curtail gang activity and drug availability across the country. I’ve personally arrested the same illegal alien felon multiple times, only to see him commit the same types of crimes again and again with no deportation papers. Such situations are a drain on police resources, as well as a menace to the neighborhoods where they are prevalent. Most police officers see sanctuary cities as asylums for illegal alien criminals rather than as safe spaces for undocumented parents of “anchor babies.” While we deal with the former on an official basis that routinely is “catch and release” in nature, most of the time we are merely attempting to build relationships and trust with the latter.
Finally, a strong Second Amendment brings the statement full-circle. No matter how many police we have patrolling the streets, we cannot be everywhere at once. It has long been my belief that decent people should not risk putting themselves at odds with the law simply by possessing the ability to defend themselves against criminals who will disregard any laws against bearing arms anyway. Arming oneself is simply a matter of common sense and self-preservation in both our inner cities—where robberies and shootings come with the territory—and in rural areas where the closest police officer could be twenty miles away at any given time. Who is the government to tell us we cannot possess the means to defend ourselves when they cannot devote the resources to provide adequate security for us?
Groups like Black Lives Matter will undoubtedly attempt to twist and spin the explicit support for law enforcement as a basic government sanctioning of racism and murder. For eight years, we’ve had an administration humoring this mentality and enabling it to gain traction in offices at the local, state, and federal levels. Changing the culture will be difficult, if not a fool’s errand altogether. After all, some very distinct lines have been drawn, and sides have been passionately chosen. How do you reteach a generation of American kids who have been ingrained to harbor feelings that range from mistrusting to hostile against law enforcement?
With that being said, I’ve also seen so many good people in crime-ridden communities show appreciation and support for the police patrolling their streets. We can’t forget about good people in bad situations, as they need the police more than anyone. They are the X-factor in changing the anti-police culture prevalent in many areas of society, as far as I’m concerned. In America, results are supposed to speak louder than any words. If the language the new administration is using is implemented into action, I have a feeling that police officers may once again be in control of our own destiny. Being included in the “big six” certainly is empowering to this cop.
T.B. Lefever is an OpsLens Contributor and active police officer in the Metro-Atlanta area. Throughout his career, Lefever has served as a SWAT Hostage Negotiator, a member of the Crime Suppression Unit, a School Resource Officer, and a Uniformed Patrol Officer. He has a BA in Criminal Justice and Sociology from Rutgers University.
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