New article by Steve Pomper at OpsLens.com

Illustration by, Levi Hastings

Well, we can count the folks at Jewish in Seattle Magazine (JISM) among those who not only hold negative stereotypes of police officers, in this case, Seattle police officers, but also commit those stereotypes to print and illustration. It would have been bad enough if the repugnant image they used portrayed generic cops, but the officers’ uniforms have SPD patches. Doing so, they declare their ignorance of and contempt for Seattle’s police officers to the world.

Now, before some leftie includes anti-Semite on the list of invectives we on the right endure whenever we attempt to express our opposing views, my recent Ancestry.com DNA results showed a smidgeon of “Eastern European Jew.” I had no idea. How did I receive this news? I embraced it with the same pride that I embraced my previously unknown “drop” of “African” blood, my unexpected modicum of Scandinavian and Irish extraction, as well as the other 90% of my white privileged, “European” heritage. Why should any portion of my racial and ethnic heritage offend me? It doesn’t change that I am 100% American!

Please, join me in related digression. Bono, of U2 fame, said something sublime and perfectly applicable in a speech at Georgetown University, I’ll share it with you:

“America is an idea. The idea that you and me are created equal. This country was the first to claw its way out of darkness and put it on paper, and God love you for it. Americans say they have a bit of the world in them… The family tree has lots of branches. The thing is, the world has a bit of America in it, too.”

This is how I see the world and why I find the JISM article so deplorable (can I use that term with the left?). The article, Can Holocaust Education Help the Seattle Police Department?, and the accompanying illustration exceed insulting or offensive and venture into the absurd and defamatory. While Emily K. Alhadeff, the author of the article, doesn’t state outright she believes Seattle police officers might become a Nazi Gestapo, but she certainly alludes to it by advocating for such “training.”

What sort of leftist bubble must she live in to believe Seattle cops would commit mass murder? Oh, right. Seattle. Does she really believe that American police officers of 2017 equate to German police officers of Nazi Germany? Does she truly believe Seattle’s men and women, sworn to protect their communities and uphold the U.S. Constitution, would obey an order to take the healthy men as slaves and then murder the rest along with their wives and children? Really? This is an example of academic, theoretical, historical (or hysterical) quackery.

And what is she implying about who exactly might give such an order? Is there anything even remotely on the political horizon about the new Republican administration that would give, lucid, rational, and critical-thinking human beings the notion that such an order is conceivable?

And speaking of critical thinking, I served Seattle as a cop for about 22 years, most of it on Capitol Hill, probably the most diverse neighborhood in the city. Of course officers use critical thinking on the job. A cop can’t operate properly without it. However, leftists characteristically reject critical thinking. That’s why some of them (see below) find it so hard to see it in others—especially cops. Their bigotry toward law enforcement won’t let them.

Alhadeff’s quotes an SPD lieutenant:

“When you’re a police officer, there are written rules for everything you do. If you think about that, over the years it causes the critical thinking to go away. Now we’re looking at individual biases, individual decision making. We’re not giving them [SPD officers] the exact takeaway. We want them to come away with the takeaway themselves.”

Think about how elitist this sounds. It’s as if the lieutenant is talking about teaching kindergarteners, not professional, sworn police officers, making them feel accomplished because they managed to find the “correct” (according to the indoctrinators) answers all by themselves. The audacity is stunning.

I remember this teaching philosophy was in effect when I was forced to participate in leftist political indoctrination. It was based on the PBS program, Race and the Power of Illusion.” While there was some valid information and factual history, the “training” conflates institutional racism of the past with today’s America, which they skew to fit their narrative of a currently uber-racist society.

Regarding, “We want them to come away with the takeaway themselves,” I remember noticing the same thing while attending my political indoctrination day camp. In fact, soon after the training, I wrote about my experience. I phrased it something like this: I felt like we were cattle being herded toward predetermined conclusions (I’m speaking literally: They asked questions and then had us get up and gather into groups according to our answers). Whenever officers offered opinions that didn’t fit the narrative, our instructors would stop or deflect the discussion in another direction. So much for critical thinking.

Jewish in Seattle Magazine should be ashamed of marginalizing the memory of the holocaust by attempting to make such a bizarre comparison as Nazis in pre-war Germany to Seattle police officers in modern America. Is it just me, or does anyone else believe JISM owes the good men and women of the Seattle Police Department an apology for insinuating they could become Nazi storm troopers?

One way to inoculate yourself against anything is to ignore it day after day until it becomes—as they say—a new normal. I wonder if this is how people who work and live in Downtown Seattle experience Seattle’s self-inflicted blight. My God! Does anyone truly think allowing people to live in this urban squalor helps anyone? Actually, it seems pretty mean to me. It doesn’t help those living in the filth, and it certainly doesn’t help the decent, law-abiding, and productive who have to drive and walk past the out-stretched-hand harassment and piss stench of the indecent, law-breaking, and unproductive.

I had to make an unavoidable trip to Downtown Seattle recently. After slogging through the Democrat-made traffic snarl on I-5, and after completing multiple circuits of the area around city hall, marveling at the lack of bicycle use of the myriad parking-stealing, convoluted ribbons of bike lanes and sharrows, I finally found a parking space (I think somewhere south of Northgate). Ironic, since I’d just been in a parking lot on what they call a freeway. Perhaps, I should have just turned off my car, left it there, hopped the guardrail, and walked to my appointment at 5^th/Cherry St. –it was a lot closer than from where I had to park!

Trodding from my parking space, under the freeway, I swerved to avoid two charming gentlemen who were reclined, usurping half the sidewalk, and sharing a marijuana pipe. How Norman Rockwell.

I’ve recently heard that Seattle is the fastest growing major American city. I was at first surprised because who would move to a place with such an onslaught of bums. Then I realized that maybe they mean the bums. Now, that would make sense. The layabouts are everywhere in Seattle. The thing about those two particular bums, getting high in broad daylight, illegally in public, under I-5 is they were two of the least offensive of those gathered nearby in tents and sleeping bags on the sidewalks and along the edges of the HOV commuter parking. At least they were minding their own business and not harassing passersby.

Inoculation may be an effective liberal city survival strategy. But I’d encourage those who can to make a point of intentionally “seeing” just how bad this is. Liberals are always talking about the “rich” not paying their fair share. Shouldn’t we all do our fair share? If you had an able bodied person living with you and not contributing to your household, you’d boot them out, right? That’s normal. If normal people do not run their households this way, why should “normal” cities? Then again, that’s the point, isn’t it? Liberal Seattle is not normal.

Charleena Lyles’ attack on two police officers, with butcher knives, which resulted in her tragic death, has brought up many issues. One of them is the use of so-called, less-than-lethal weapons vs. lethal options: Tasers vs. firearms.

Many people have asked, “Why didn’t the cops tase her instead?”

Facts people should know:

• Seattle’s cops must carry a firearm and have an option to carry any of three less-than-lethal weapons: baton, pepper-spray, and/or Taser. An officer may carry one, two, or all three options. I carried a baton and pepper-spray.
• In training, cops are taught that to properly deploy the Taser against a person armed with a deadly weapon, three officers should be present. One officer to deploy the Taser, a second officer for lethal cover (ready with a firearm should the Taser application fail), and a third officer to place the suspect in handcuffs. Routine calls, such as the (false) burglary report Ms. Lyles called in, normally require only one officer to respond. Her known criminal and mental health history made it so radio dispatched two officers (obviously, short of the three necessary).
• When the Taser program started, many officers chose to take the training and become certified to use a Taser on duty.
• As the program continued, community activists and groups criticized the police Taser use. Some even regularly accused cops of “torturing” suspects with their Tasers.
• As criticism increased, policies began changing, making it so to use a Taser an officer needed nearly the same circumstances that would be needed to use lethal force.  
• Several officers told me that due to these policy changes, they were turning in their Tasers.
• Since a gun is much more efficient than a Taser in saving an officer’s life during a deadly encounter why would a cop put himself or herself in a position that causes hesitation? Hesitation kills cops.

So, when cop-critics harangue police officers for not using a Taser, they can look in the mirror for why an officer didn’t choose to have a Taser as an option.

The recent shooting in North Seattle of 30-year-old Charleena Chavon Lyles is an unmitigated tragedy. There is no doubt about that. During my police career, I worked a sector with numerous mental health facilities and patients. I dealt with the mentally ill often, had a good relationship with their staffs, and received commendations from them. While I had little sympathy for those who knew better and still committed violent crimes, I had a great deal of compassion for people with significant mental health issues. In some cases, their actions simply were not their faults. But that does not lessen the danger they present to police officers responding to 911 calls. According to news reports from KIRO, Ms. Lyles seems to have been one of those people with significant mental health issues.

Unfortunately, before anything more than a preliminary investigation has been conducted, some family members, community activists, and leftist politicians are already making assertions that police racism was a factor in the incident. Family members have leveled these knee-jerk charges, and anti-police groups have also glommed onto that all-too-convenient notion–it fits their narrative. Still, while families in mourning deserve wide latitude, regarding emotional comments after suffering such a loss, the cop critics do not—they know better but don’t care about the truth–the truth doesn’t fit their narrative. 

What a shame that the mainstream liberal media, progressive politicians, and leftist community activists have given tacit (sometimes, blatant) permission or even instructions to minority communities to make quantum leaps, blaming racism every time police shoot a black suspect.

During the fatal encounter, these facts should be remembered as critical: She was the one who called the police. She wanted to report a burglary. She armed herself with two butcher knives. She refused orders to “stay back” and came at the officers. Despite Ms. Lyles being a “known” entity to police for both mental health and criminal issues, officers can be heard on audio of the incident properly investigating Ms. Lyles’ burglary complaint. In fact, on audio the first words from one of the officers were, “Hello, good morning. You call the police?” Hardly the manner of a white, racist police officer intent on killing a black woman—or anyone!

While conducting the investigation, reports indicate Ms. Lyles threatened the officers with the two knives. Despite numerous orders to “stay back,” Ms. Lyles reportedly came at the officers who were forced to shoot her.

I know critical thinking is asking a lot these days, but rather than blaming the cops, how about looking at a mental health system that seems to have failed Ms. Lyles, her children, family, the community, and the police. And what about the judge who released Ms. Lyles despite her recent history of placing her children in harms-way and violent behavior toward the police?

On June 5th, Ms. Lyles confronted police in a similar incident where she’d armed herself with an “extra-long” pair of scissors, using them to threaten the officers (incidentally, the officers responding in the butcher knives case were aware of that incident. Fortunately, in that incident, she dropped the scissors, so the officers did not have to use deadly force). According to KIRO, she also told the officers, “Ain’t none of ya’ll leaving [her] here today!” Incredibly, her 4-year-old child was, “sitting in her lap, and, at points, crawling around her waist,” during that incident. 

Five days before the deadly shooting, Ms. Lyles attended a Mental Health Court hearing regarding the earlier incident. Think about this: The judge obviously considered Lyles dangerous enough to set this condition before her release: He ordered her not to “possess weapons or items which can be used as weapons.” Seriously? 

Now, I hesitate to criticize the mental health system too harshly because they are overburdened and understaffed. But, just think about the level of mental instability of this poor woman the court released back into society. Anyone think the criminal justice or mental health system, as a whole, did Ms. Lyles any favors? During the fatal incident, Police officers reported Ms. Lyles said she wanted to, “morph into a wolf” and mentioned “cloning her daughter.” But, it’s too easy to blame the cops, right?

But what about the people or person who made the decision to release her five days before her death? Do they deserve any culpability? Apparently not. I’m sure the release will come up in the discussion, but since they are a part of Seattle/King County’s liberal establishment, they will likely be seen as simply progressives who meant well, so they can’t be blamed. It must be the cops fault—always. And since the cops’ own political (and sometimes even police) leaders rarely support or defend officers’ uses-of-force with any vigor, if at all, then why shouldn’t society believe cops are bad? Most law enforcement jurisdictions remain horrible at teaching the public about what, why, and how cops do what they do.

How have we gotten to a place in our society where nationally and locally we have the best trained law enforcement officers in America’s history, yet the default response is to blame the police? Ms. Lyles’ demise is a true and plain tragedy. But not just for Ms. Lyles, her family and friends but for the officers, too. Seattle Police Chief Kathleen O’Toole echoed this in the Seattle Times, “The message I’m trying to get out right now is that this is a horrible tragedy all around.” She added, “The community is distraught. The family is distraught. The officers are distraught.” [Emphasis mine] Come on, people. These officers, who chose to dedicate their professional lives to serve and protect the Seattle community, are not happy they were forced to shoot a mentally ill, pregnant woman. To even think that is a malicious insult, ignorant, and just plain stupid.

Regardless of what the cop-haters spew about police officers “hunting minorities in the streets” (which government statistics have thoroughly debunked), those officers now must deal with the emotional ramifications of having to end the life of a mentally ill woman who should never have been at that location, never been holding those knives, and never been threatening those two police officers on that quiet Sunday in Seattle.

Busy with home projects, I’ve had little time to blog, lately. However, a recent photo and story on the FB Brier Community Page yearns for comment. I’m not including the photo or name of the FB page poster (it’s a private group). You’ll have to trust me on this one. For the record, I’m posting this blog in my capacity as a critical thinking advocate.

In today’s touchy-feely, politically-correct-on-steroids social environment, this incident is so ridiculous it illustrates the lens through which some people choose to view ordinary things.

Passing a house in Brier, an alert citizen observed, and then reported to the police, what he or she thought was a “noose” hanging from a tree limb. In the photo, the thick white rope can be seen suspended from a branch with the “noose” (a loop), dangling close to the ground (scratch head here). Coincidentally, the “noose” loop just happens to be positioned perfectly for a child to place a foot (not a head) into the rope’s loop. 

More head-scratching comes when you see in the photo the rope and “noose” is obviously a swing. The homeowner says her kids have been enjoying the swing—for the past FIVE YEARS! (Sorry for yelling, but come on, people). 

Hypersensitive folks with their offend-me switches turned up to eleven, listen up. Please, stop looking at the world through moron-colored glasses. If you look at a child’s rope swing and see a hangman’s noose, please seek help. Now! 

ARE YOU KIDDING ME???

Never, ever, think that the lunacy oozing from Seattle’s leftist Laboratory can’t reach new heights—or depths. Per MYNorthwest.com, when Seattle police officers complete use-of-force reports, now, they are no longer allowed to use the term “suspect” to describe, well, a suspect.

What term have they come up with that better describes a suspect who has presented enough resistance or threat, including deadly, that officers had to use force, including deadly, to subdue the suspect? “Community member.” No folks, this is not a SNL skit or a story from The Onion; this is what has become normal for Seattle.

Can you imagine? I’m a cop. I’ve just come in after having arrested a career criminal who pulled a knife and tried to stab me. I finally get to writing my reports including a use-of-force report. Now, I’ve got a lot of names I’d like to call the criminal, but I settle for “suspect,” because that’s what he is: suspected in a crime—resisting arrest and assaulting an officer (Me!) with a deadly weapon.

However, I can no longer use the term “suspect.” People in city government, and vendors selling progressive law enforcement software, most who have never been cops and don’t have the slightest idea what cops do, have a better—more respectful—term for suspects who fight with police officers.

Use-of-Force Statement: This is a true and involuntary statement given by me, Officer… Blah, blah, blah. On yadda, yadda date, at 0-dark-30, I was dispatched to a disturbance at a house known for narcotics sales and frequent violent criminal activities. On arrival I observed the community member, later identified as…, stride in an aggressive manner toward my patrol car. I exited my vehicle and told the community member to stop. The community member failed to obey my instructions. When the community member was within 10 feet of me, the community member reached into his jacket and withdrew a knife with what appeared to be an 8-10 inch fixed blade. I drew my department-issued sidearm and ordered the community member to stop and drop the knife. Instead, the community member….  

Again, are you kidding me?

People who know my writing, know that I hesitate to use words and phrases that convey personal attacks rather than those that attack a person’s actions or views. But, come on… Who was the idiot, moron—fool who came up with or is forcing Seattle’s cops to use this politically correct excrement?

Using the term “community member” to describe a dangerous suspect is yet another attack on police officers whose job it is to deal with Seattle’s human vermin. “Community member” conveys an air of respectability violent criminal suspects don’t deserve.

Oh, wait a minute. I just thought of something. I suppose Seattle’s social justice language pirates may actually have held back on the term they truly would have preferred. Perhaps, we should be thankful they didn’t order cops to refer to a suspect as, “comrade.”

I try to stick to law enforcement and libertarian issues, but sometimes it too hard. I see something “shiny” and I must speak up. I heard something this morning that is making my head spin.

Do you know about the Taylor Force Act?

 First, what about the Palestinian Authority’s (PA) official policy of paying money to the families of terrorists who kill Israelis and others? The PA has it in their charter and has allocated it in their budget, to pay families of suicide bombers and other attackers of civilians.

This now includes the family of the murderer of Taylor Force, an American, visiting Israel. Walking down the street, Force was among the many innocent civilians 22-year-old, Palestinian terrorist, Bashar Masalha, stabbed on March 8, 2016 in Tel Aviv. Force died from his wounds. Ten others survived. Police shot and killed Masalha.

Troublesome is that the United States provides to the PA some of the funds distributed to the family of Masalha in foreign aid. That’s right, you and I are paying a bounty to the family of an honored Palestinian murderer who killed a fellow American. The terrorist’s body arrived home in the PA to a hero’s welcome. 

Now for something even more troublesome. According to the report I watched, not one Democrat is supporting a bill to cut off funding to the PA unless the government stops these payments to the families of terrorists. The amount of payments totals in the hundreds of million of dollars per year. Think these bounties encourages violence against Israel and others? 

Does a bill to stop helping the PA conduct this brutal practice sound radical to you? What justification could any Democrat—any sane person—have for not supporting such a measure? This is yet another sign of the lunacy of the left and how radical that party has become. Personal integrity be damned; support the Party at all costs.

It is nothing less than barbaric that a fledgling political entity, endeavoring to gain inclusion among the family of nations, would maintain such a ghoulish practice in today’s modern world–and do it with the largesse of other nations. Such audacity. 

Having grown up in a non-political, but decidedly Democrat household in Massachusetts, where the families I knew had three, non-family, photos on their walls: John F. Kennedy, Robert F. Kennedy, and Jesus, I have to ask. What the hell happened to the Democratic Party, and where have all the freedom of speech-loving, violence-hating Democrats gone?

I was pleased to see the January 11, 2017 Pew Research Center results of a comprehensive survey of police officers’ views on the current anti-police (my words, not theirs) state in America and its effect on cops. Listen, this is not a new phenomenon, especially in big liberal bastions such as Seattle. This alleged “abuse of force” and “bias policing” controversy and animus toward cops by the left has been with us for many years. It’s just that now we have a nationally-known, alliterate tag for it: the “Ferguson Effect.”

Since the Ferguson incident, in which a police officer shot and killed a robbery suspect who’d assaulted and attempted to disarm him, gave rise to Black Lives Matter, activists and media have selected that event as the inception of the anti-police culture in America. But it’s not—not even close. Anti-police lefties have been chipping away at the integrity of law enforcement officers for a long time. Now, after eight years of enjoying support from one of two major political parties, the United States Department of Justice, and from the President, the fruits of their onslaught are being harvested on America’s streets. 

The environment in which police work today allows for an officer to act entirely according to the tactics and policies instructors taught in the police academy or advanced training unit yet still suffer consequences as if the officer had acted improperly. This recently happened to a friend of mine. In fact, despite the department’s lead defensive tactics instructor describing the officer’s actions during the incident in question as “perfect,” Seattle’s police chief fired him. How do you think that affects future actions of other police officers?     

One positive aspect of this increased attention is that sane America is finally taking notice of this attempt at societal suicide. Marginalizing—demonizing—our cops when our nation is so vulnerable to lawlessness in our inner-cities and from potential terrorist threats is insane. 

No matter how many times FBI statistics and Ivy League studies inform us of the reality that cops are not gunning down young black men in the streets—other young black men are, the Ferguson myth persists. Mind numbed miscreants still thrust their hands in the air, chanting “Hands up, don’t shoot” regardless that the DOJ, of all agencies, debunked that lie.

Look at the recent controversy over a painting displayed in Congress depicting police officers as pigs. In fact, in the painting, a young man in the background has his hands up. The controversy has resulted in a, put-it-up-take-it-down, game between offending Democrat and defending Republican lawmakers.  

But this is not game. This blatant insult to America’s police officers is occurring in the U.S. Congress. We have American leaders, the Congressional Black Caucus, exhibiting a painting which portrays police officers as pigs. The Democrat who hung the painting, Rep. William Lacy Clay, still cites Michael Brown as an example of so-called police abuses against Americans of African descent.

Clay is an intelligent man. He can read as well as any other person. He knows what the FBI statistics show. But this issue is not about knowing; it’s about not wanting to know, and it seems the good Congressman and his compatriots simply do not want to know the truth, or they ignore it. They’d rather perpetuate ideology-fabricated myths befitting their chosen narrative. 

Now, I don’t like what the painting represents, but it’s doing part of what art is supposed to do: it’s making us think and discuss. But that doesn’t change the inappropriateness of the venue–on display in the U.S. Congress. The painting also does something else: It demonstrates what some schools are apparently teaching our children. I don’t know the young artist, but It’s obvious his view of police is colored by the anti-police mythology “taught” by many teachers and community activists. I don’t blame the young artist; if you’re told lies every day by people you respect, you’re likely to believe them.

Regardless of the controversies listed above, contributing to what Pew’s research found about American cops, this anti-police trend has been with us for a very long time. First in liberal localities and then eight years ago when Americans elected a president who holds police officers in contempt and who has no problem showing it.

Don’t believe me? Aside from incidents such as the well-known Cambridge police incident and President Obama’s Eric Holder-led DOJ pogrom against American law enforcement, I’ll leave you with this: A few days ago, on Law Enforcement Appreciation Day, despite the many murders of police officers in 2016, including the single-incident slaughter of five Dallas police officers, and despite having swathed the White House in rainbow colors to celebrate gay marriage, President Obama again refused honor the nation’s police officers by illuminating the White House in blue.   

Here we go again. In a speech given at Princeton University, Seattle’s police chief, Kathleen O’Toole, called on police departments to “embrace reform.” She elaborated: “Everybody wants to talk about guns and drugs, and, yes, we need to talk about crime and crime rates, but my most complicated issue right now is first of all equity and social justice in our policing, in our community. And also it’s the intersection of public safety and public health.” At the risk of appearing puerile, gag me! 

Anyone espousing “social justice” in law enforcement exposes themselves as a left wing ideologue and displays contempt for constitutional equal justice. Social justice, as defined by liberal government, cannot coexist with equal justice because it treats people not as individuals but according to which “victim” group(s) they belong.

Take Seattle’s race-based enforcement of Driving While License Suspended 3^rd degree. For years, unlike other citations issued directly to offenders, officers must forward these tickets to the city attorney’s office so they can determine who “merits punishment,” according to social justice criteria, including race, ethnicity, and socioeconomic status. (Yes, no kidding) Check it out for yourself.

In her speech at the Woodrow Wilson (well, there’s one problem, right there) School of Public and International Affairs, Chief O’Toole cites a focus on the relationship of trust between the police and children. She said, “Without that trust we as police fail.” Answer this: How does perpetuating lies about cops and what cops do engender trust? 

To give you an idea of the false premises under which Chief O’Toole and other leftist leaders view police officers, the article’s writer used this springboard: “More than two years after the shooting of Michael Brown in Ferguson, Missouri, law enforcement and government officials, scholars, student leaders and community members gathered to address the issue of “Racial Justice and Policing in America.” Ferguson? Michael Brown? In the article, the writer cites the Ferguson incident twice as if it’s an important anchor in this discussion of a false police excessive force epidemic—talk about fake news.

Did I miss something? Wasn’t it Eric Holder’s U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) that established Ferguson police officer Darren Wilson acted properly after robbery suspect Michael Brown assaulted him and attempted to take his gun? The writer is highlighting Ferguson as an apparent precipitating incident regarding the police “problems” discussed by Chief O’Toole. The writer is emphasizing a lie. The Ferguson “hands up, don’t shoot” never happened.

According to the article, “She [O’Toole] described the past two years in Seattle as a very difficult period, with the department under a federal consent decree, required to curb excessive force and biased policing.” 

Well, the left fabricated this “difficult period” over the past several years through an alliance between Seattle’s liberal government, anti-police community activists, and President Obama’s DOJ. The consent decree never should have occurred. What happens when you try to fix something that isn’t broken? It breaks. I point you to Seattle University Professor Matthew J. Hickman’s Seattle Time’s article and his study debunking the DOJ’s “conclusions” and advising Seattle to, “Call the DOJ’s bluff and demand an apology.” 

Following a bogus study by the DOJ and its resultant sham conclusions, the feds enacted a consent decree against a police department that didn’t deserve it. Has anyone asked how the Seattle Police Department went from being considered a model American law enforcement agency one day, sought after by other departments for examples of “best practices” in policing, and the next day deemed a veritable American law enforcement disaster? I remember training with German police officers who traveled across an ocean and continent just to benefit from SPD’s superb knowledge base and training. But to leftists the ends justify the means, right? So sacrificing an excellent police department on the alter of liberal, political correctness was just business as usual. To hell with all of the good police officers negatively affected by their anti-police, political agendas.

The DOJ’s result was no surprise. The DOJ hasn’t met a police department it didn’t find to be racist and abusive. Former U.S. Attorney Andrew C. McCarthy laid out the DOJ consent decree formula: From a Newsmax.com article, “McCarthy cited a string of federal civil-rights investigations into some 20 police departments, including Ferguson, Missouri’s, which he said the Justice Department has approached with a presumption of racial guilt.” Precisely what happened in Seattle.

Could the SPD be improved? What organization couldn’t? Just because an organization must keep abreast of developing policies, strategies, techniques, and technologies doesn’t mean that organization is broken. Just because an individual officer violates policy or law, doesn’t mean all officers need “new” training. Especially when the liberal’s “training” is more about leftist, political indoctrination disguised as law enforcement training than it is true police instruction.  

None of that matters to Chief O’Toole. She said, “Not only did the department [SPD] deserve that consent decree, it is a much better place as a result of that decree. We need to embrace reform as a good thing. Change is not bad.” Well, change is bad if it’s based on lies.

SPD is “better” now? Oh, I want to say bad words!

How does O’Toole know? She came to Seattle after the phony decree was implemented. She’s had to rely on the left wing ideologues permeating Seattle’s halls of “social” justice for her information. I retired from the SPD a month or so before she was sworn in to office. I was optimistic. On paper, she seemed a stellar selection. Also, we’re from the same state, Massachusetts, so I felt a kinship. No longer. While she is a nice person—in person, as with all of Seattle’s police chiefs, regrettably, she is a marionette whose strings are manipulated by Seattle’s leftist government. Drink the Kool-Aid or you’re out. 

 O’Toole boasted, “We’ve reduced our use of force by 55 percent just in the last year and a half.” Well, duh. Proactive policing is virtually nonexistent. Out of career preservation, officers can’t do nearly as much as they used to or want to—can you say, de-policing? How can they when their leaders will not back them if things go wrong, even when they act in good faith?

Here’s a question: How can you do the job when even if you do it correctly, even if the department’s lead defensive tactics instructor says your use of force was “perfect,” the chief still fires you? I suppose it could be worse. An officer could be tried, convicted, and sent to prison for doing his or her job. Just ask Seattle City Attorney Pete Holmes who’s tried and failed several times to prosecute Seattle police officers.

The Princeton article noted that, “Ms. O’Toole also commented on the importance of hiring officers who reflect the communities they serve, and ‘not people who think that policing is all about the gun fighting and car chases they see on television, but people who understand that policing is a vocation.’” Oh, help me… I really, really, want to say bad words!

Just look at what Chief O’Toole thinks about the type of people, prior to her administration, who’d become police officers and their motivations for serving. What a profound insult to police officers. This is the person responsible for leading Seattle’s Thin (and getting thinner by the day) Blue Line? Officers are persecuted (not to mention executed) enough these days without having a chief who seems to hold her veteran officers in such low esteem.

“‘We’ve hired young responsible, articulate, idealistic people from very different backgrounds with very different professional and personal experiences,’ she continued. ‘It’s very exciting to see. They’ll make our department so much more effective.’” Gee, thanks, Chief. And good luck with that Utopian social experiment.

Hey, all you old, stammering, realistic people [cops] from homogeneous backgrounds with very similar professional and personal experiences. You SPD dinosaurs who’ve dedicated your lives to making Seattle a safer place, just step aside. Salvation has arrived. No, really. The liberals have come to save the day. I mean, the left is well known for its commitment to “law and order,” right? 

Does it sound like Chief O’Toole has a legitimate, objective view of her veteran Seattle police officers? No, Chief O’Toole describes the ideal police officer as, apparently, different from current officers who’ve served Seattle for many years and decades. Her perspective comes from a left wing, social justice ideological one—and that’s putting it politely. 

“‘Princeton Police Chief Nick Sutter [appointed by liberals], who applauded the ‘excellent forum,’ echoed Ms. O’Toole’s message, observing that her proposals have been implemented in Princeton and are consistent with best practices as outlined in President Obama’s report on 21st Century Policing. Mr. Sutter summed up the comments made by Chief O’Toole… that ‘the police are the public and the public are the police. Without collaboration and trust, neither can be successful.’” This is so profound, I think my head might just implode from the dazzling brilliance of these people.

Sounds like Chief O’Toole’s Princeton speech was another successful liberal echo [literally: see above paragraph] chamber. Leftists back-slapping each other, congratulating themselves on yet another brilliant forum about how to fix problems that don’t exist (or that they created or imagined), exacerbated by lies that won’t die, and delivered by ideologues who won’t quit.