Page 29 - November 2017 Magazine

My biggest fear about the war on police is being realized
America in 2016, post-Black Lives Matter, is less secure, less free, more divided and less- er-than in every respect when it comes to our national ideals of freedom and justice for all. Not only has the recycled Occu-
py Wall Street movement created and exacerbated racial tensions in our communities, it has encouraged and set the groundwork for real violence
For now, the media and the Black Lives Matter acolytes have set their sights on law enforcement. We are the pro- tectors not only of the lives, property and security of the
communities we serve but of something much greater – the rule of law.
But tomorrow they may (if they haven’t already) set their sights on the rest of America. When a Po- lice Officer is shamed in the pages of cop loathing
A THOUGHT FROM Sheriff David Clarke
SHERRIFF DAVID CLARKE
aimed at police across our country.
In the past, the country has witnessed Black Lives
Matter-inspired violence aimed at police. Now, we have police so fearful of the media-enabled and Holly- wood-sanctioned frenzy against law enforcement and the use of deadly force – totally devoid of any factual basis – that the police are now choosing possible death rather than defending themselves against dangerous criminals. Criminals, I might add, who threaten not only the police but also the vulnerable poor and minority communities the police seek to serve.
This past week in Chicago, a 17-year veteran of the Chi- cago Police Department had her head bashed into the pavement repeatedly by a man high on PCP. The attack rendered her unconscious and in need of hospitalization for her injuries. According to the Chicago Superintendent of Police Eddie Johnson, this female Officer was so fearful of media scrutiny and the effect it might have on her fam- ily that, even facing (her) own death, she withheld using deadly force to protect herself.
Coincidentally, the Chicago Police Department recent- ly released the changes made to its “use of deadly force” policies in reaction to the Obama Department of Justice’s report on the Department, using the term “sanctity of life” to refer to the “new” approach. The marketing de- partment must have been firing on all cylinders when it appropriated that term from the pro-life movement for its empty-rhetoric press-release-oriented policy.
As a member of law enforcement, I take my responsi- bility toward the community we serve extremely serious- ly. The use of deadly force, a situation we try to avoid at all costs but one that sometimes becomes necessary in order to protect the community and the lives of the men and women who serve under me, has always been treat- ed with the utmost caution and gravity regardless of what propaganda cop haters spew.
That my officers feel the burden of a media culture’s fix- ation with indicting law enforcement on the front pages at the behest of a far-left movement designed to foment anarchy and not truth, infuriates me. Beyond making our ability to serve the communities more difficult, there’s a broader issue at stake.
newspapers for using deadly force, and placed into a baseless narrative of police violence, then who will be next? Will the everyday American also be shamed without cause in the pages of the New York Times and the Washington Post? They are gunning for the Police now, but all too soon it will be the rest of us – any of us who stand for equality before the law, due process and order
over chaos. d
Sheriff David Clarke is the Milwaukee County Sheriff. Follow him @SheriffClarke.
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