This, as with all other things directly influenced by FederalGovCo overreach, intrusion, and excessive ambition, can only end badly.
Local control of the police is vital to the preservation of American democracy. Police officers and sheriff’s deputies swear an oath not only to serve and protect their communities but also to uphold the U.S. Constitution. Ideally, the police should serve as guardians of public safety and as defenders against government tyranny. Leftist elites detest these safeguards of liberty. The woke oligarchs are the tyrannical faction the American founders had the foresight to protect us against by establishing a constitutional federal republic.
A central feature of any totalitarian regime—Nazi Germany, Soviet Russia, Communist China—is a national police force under total control of the central government. Totalitarians nationalize the police not to control crime, but to control their citizens. This is what the leftist elites envision for America and they are working hard to make it happen. The rampant lawlessness, violence, and chaos that has engulfed our cities since the summer of 2020 directly results from their scheme. They want to create dysfunctional local police departments as a pretext to nationalize all law enforcement.
Policing in every major city is in crisis—the rule of law has collapsed, people are not safe, and the war on cops is escalating.
Let’s take a look at where we are, the current policies of the Democratic Party that got us here, the historical context of the Left’s assault on the police, and what we need to do to defeat them.
We already know what must be done to defeat them. Sadly, it’s against the law—for now, at least. But as Amerika v2.0 continues its death spiral into a spectacular crash ‘n’ burn, one suspects that “the law” might become less and less effective at constraining the baser impulses of hungry, desperate people whose focus has been narrowed by circumstances to day to day survival.
The author goes on to sketch out as good a thumbnail outline of Marxism, Gramsci, the Frankfurt School, Cultural Marxism, and their unwholesome impact on the health and vigor of American society as I ever did see, before moving on to more specific, less broad topics. I doubt you’ll be surprised to learn who the main author of both our skyrocketing crime rate and steadily metastisizing policing woes might have been.
While recent external attacks have shaken American policing, other forces have been at work for years, undermining and subverting the institution from within. This arguably started during Barack Obama’s administration, with Attorney General Eric Holder acting as his point man.
Before Obama effectively declared war on the police, law enforcement agencies across the United States had been making significant progress in improving officer behavior and building effective police-community partnerships. This was accomplished by implementing training in “police legitimacy” and “procedural justice,” both concepts developed by social psychologist Tom Tyler.
Legitimacy is the belief that the police should be allowed to exercise their authority and maintain order. It is achieved when people accept their obligation to defer to police authority based on trust and believing that police are honest, and their actions are appropriate and morally justified.Procedural justice is the “roadmap” to achieving legitimacy through positive police interaction with citizens. These police actions include allowing people an opportunity to explain their side of the story; taking a neutral disposition; making decisions based on the law and facts instead of personal bias; treating people politely, with dignity and respect; and, finally, explaining clearly the reason for police decisions and actions. Experience has shown that legitimacy is increased when people believe the police have treated them fairly and with respect, even when the final outcome is not in their favor.
At the forefront of these policing innovations was the Chicago Police Department (CPD). By 2012, CPD was leading the way, and had developed a 40-hour training program that 8,400 CPD officers would complete by 2016. Police departments across the country and worldwide came to Chicago for training and to become certified as trainers for their departments.
As a Chicago police lieutenant, I completed the training in early 2015. I recognized its value in reenergizing veteran officers who may have become cynical or burned out and correctly orienting new officers at the start of their law-enforcement careers. Importantly, through its emphasis upon communication and treating all people fairly and respectfully, legitimacy and procedural justice greatly helped to transform police-community relationships in positive ways. I brought Chicago’s groundbreaking policing philosophies with me when I took on the role of chief of the Martinsburg, West Virginia Police Department in October 2015.
CPD’s program was a major success, resulting in significantly fewer use-of-force incidents and citizen complaints against officers. This presented a unique opportunity for improving American policing. But instead of promoting it as the primary training focus, it was sabotaged by the Obama Administration, which identified a new priority: implicit bias training.
Not only did Barack Obama do more to divide Americans by race than any president in our lifetimes, he was also the most anti-police president in history.
That’s just the tip of the iceberg, too. Credit where due: for such a scrawny, jug-eared, slope-shouldered, emasculated little punk-ass pussyfart, Barky Hussein Obooboo (MMMM! MMMM! MMMM!) has made a bigger contribution to the ultimate destruction of America That Was than just about any other single soul I know about. With his record, Bathhouse Barry could well be the definitive example of what the expression “punching way above his weight” signifies.
Obama’s self-righteous anti-police rhetoric and bogus claims of systemic racism fueled hatred of the police and prepared the groundwork for the war on cops. He legitimized Black Lives Matter in the public consciousness—excusing their mob violence and inviting BLM leaders to the White House, even though they had regularly chanted for the murders of police officers. Race-based demonization and anti-police propaganda has only accelerated with Joe Biden in office, even as Biden has made a show of walking back the “defund the police” rhetoric.
Implicit bias training is derived from Harvard University’s implicit association test (IAT). The IAT measures and compares how quickly a person responds to positive and negative words by clicking a computer key when viewing a black or white face. Its inventors claim that timed differences in reaction, measured in milliseconds, reveal unconscious racial prejudice. Advocates further claimed that “implicit bias” causes police officers to discriminate against black people, including racial profiling, unjust arrests, and disproportionate use of force. These claims are not grounded in science and have been thoroughly debunked.
The implicit association test and implicit bias training are colossal scams. As a psychological testing instrument, the IAT fails two basic scientific standards—it is not reliable, and the results are not valid. The same person taking the IAT may score significantly different levels of “bias” every time the test is taken. And the test is absolutely unable to predict bias or discriminatory behavior in the real world.
But the implicit bias training scam has become a billion-dollar business and now pervades law enforcement. The New York Police Department jumped on board early, with 36,000 NYPD officers taking implicit bias training at a cost of $5.5 million. The program continues even though NYPD’s own study showed no change in officer enforcement behavior. The wasteful misdirection of billions in taxpayer dollars is a disgrace, but the true evil of implicit bias training is much worse.
Implicit bias training and the racist ideology of critical race theory go hand-in-hand. The false belief of the entire implicit bias project is that racism is an unconscious psychological phenomenon in all white people, fostered by white supremacy, and manifests in every human interaction. This is also the central tenet of critical race theory. Both maintain that all white people are racist—regardless of their behavior. So it’s hardly surprising that implicit bias training has paved the way for the poison of CRT indoctrination in federal agencies and police departments. Both the FBI and the Austin, Texas Police Department have programmed their members with CRT’s racist, anti-American ideology.
Funny, innit, how seemingly every one of these shitlib “moral” crusades accomplishes not a damned thing but making a bunch of shitlibs rich.
Okay, enough with the excerpting, I think. Since this one was culled from AmGreat’s “Weekend Long Reads” section, you might conclude that this is a lengthy piece, and you’d be right about that. In fact, I haven’t finished it yet myself, having made it only about two-thirds of the way through. But I’m gonna; unless Chief Richards veers badly off the rails in the final third for some strange reason, I think this article is very much worth bulling on through to the end. It’s a serious treatment of a serious subject, engagingly written by a former lawdog who’s been there and done that, and therefore knows quite well whereof he speaks.
Update! I swear, the more I read of this thing the better it gets. Richards covers a tremendous amount of territory here, which has got me thinking I just might need to do a follow-up post so as to address some of the overspill. One thing this article deftly if somewhat obliquely suggests is how readily the malignancy of Leftism can be discerned throughout every least nook and cranny of our society—they worm their way in, then immediately get to work undermining, sabotaging, and ruining absolutely everything that lifted America That Was to unprecedented heights of national greatness. It provides yet another reminder that there must be a day of reckoning for these skulking, slinking hyenas and the numberless crimes they’ve committed, and that right soon—not merely for simple justice’s sake, but for our own self-preservation as well.
You didn’t include a link to the source, Mike.
Apologies, Fran. She be fixed now, and my thanks for the heads-up.
We are on our own
History sure repeats – Germany 1933