Once again, although I hesitate to post other opinions, because there are too many good pieces out there, another one I read recently rose above the others.
I encourage you to go to the West Seattle Herald for an illuminating piece providing a perspective all Seattleites should hear. Link: Article
Was just down in beautiful, earthy and ever-so-tie-dyed Oregon for a fewdays. A sign in a coffee shop read, “Re-Green the Earth.” It was a reminder that Earth Day, April 22, was approaching, and now, here it is. It pricked my memories of how I, a right-leaning libertarian, used to appreciate Earth Day. I liked the idea of recycling, living close to the Earth, utilizing items to their fullest potential, and making my own environmentalist decisions based on my assessment of the information out there—voluntarily!
Today, when I hear someone mention, Earth Day, I gag. Well, not literally but at least figuratively. One issue pops into my mind: Paper or plastic? There are environmentalist arguments on both sides of this issue. However, in some jurisdictions one side or the other has managed to use the force of government to impose their political will on others, regardless of the actual benefits or harm done to the environment, not to mention the economy—just as long as their point of view is mandated, they are happy. Well, until they come up with their next environmental crisis.
What’s my problem? It’s the fact that the left: liberals, progressives, collectivists, statists, whatever they and others are calling them these days, has turned environmentalism—not to mention every other -ism they support—into a quasi-religion. It is not enough to teach by example or to attempt to convince one to one’s side through education and persuasion. No. Now, one must agree that government force is necessary to impose a left-wing political philosophy disguised as conservationism by cramming it down people’s throats whether they agree or not with a certain political philosophy, not a settled scientific consensus. Galileo suffered from a similar quasi-scientific/religious consensus four centuries ago in the form of an intolerant church. Today, an intolerant political perspective is doing it.
Libertarian that I am, I instinctively buck at such a notion. When an idea has to be forced on people by government, that is probably not an idea worth a damn. I am no more authorized to force an idea on you than you are on me. We are sovereign over our own lives, are we not? Perhaps, if we all lived by a simple code expressed best in the title to Freedom Works President Matt Kibbe’s new book, Don’t Hurt People and Don’t Take Their Stuff: A Libertarian Manifesto, we’d all be better off.
When a group or an individual espouses a philosophy of mandate over one of educate, one must look with suspicion on the message and the messenger. What is the true agenda?
Perhaps, instead of worrying about the jack-booted greenies and their government allies, I should simply adopt a new tradition that someone I know has adopted. In fact, this is a rather liberal friend who adheres to most of the liberal conventions, lest she be excluded—or perhaps, as the Mozilla executive found recently, excommunicated, socially castrated and ostracized. However, risking these consequences, on Earth Day each year she dedicates the day to eradicating noxious weeds, assassinating them with a healthy dose of Round Up. Perhaps even better: some entrepreneur could come up with a, Round Up, to kill progressive ideas.
Sadly, I must preface this blog/article in order to convey some background. Unfortunately, the Seattle Times is the only major newspaper covering the Seattle area, and apparently the gatekeepers aren’t particularly interested in presenting all sides of an issue. However, they don’t seem to mind pretending they are interested.
I wrote an op-ed addressing the damaging effects of the U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) consent decree on the Seattle Police Department and commenting on the fact that the Seattle news media continuously fail to put the consent decree in its proper context in its news reports. Rather than reporting that the DOJ consent decree was controversial due to the dubious way in which the DOJ conducted its “investigation,” most Seattle media only report the fact the SPD is under a consent decree due to a “pattern and practice of” officer brutality and misconduct, as if that is a universally agreed upon fact, which it most definitely is not.
On February 11, 2014, prior to my retirement from the SPD, I submitted the first version of the following article to the Seattle Times as a Guest Op-Ed hoping it would be published while I was still on the job. What followed was 36 days of running through a Seattle Time’s gauntlet they had apparently set up for me. My wife cancelled our Times subscription back in ‘99 due to the consistently inaccurate reporting during WTO. She told me I was wasting my time if I thought the Seattle Times would print a Seattle street cop’s perspective on the current state of the police department under a federal consent decree and city social justice regime.
In declining the article after such a delay, the Seattle Times provided a perfect example of a leftist bias, which prevents it from providing balanced perspectives to its readers.
Below is the timeline of the publishing obstacle course Sharon Chan of the Seattle Times had me run, as I simply attempted to bring to light what I and many of my brother and sister officers have experienced:
Feb. 11- Article submitted to the Seattle Times.
Feb. 12- Times request to cut article to 650-word limit.
Feb. 15- Sent revision cut by 50%.
Feb 20- Times request I footnote/cite article due to “High Stakes” subject.
Feb 21- Sent revision w/ footnotes and citations.
Mar. 3- Follow Up: Asked if Times received revision.
Mar. 3- Times reply: Will get back to you by end of day Mar. 4.
Mar. 4- Times request I accept their edits and they will publish within 4 weeks.
Mar.10- Sent, yet another, revision to Times.
Mar.14- Times informed me they are doing additional edits.
Mar. 15- I sent reply acknowledgement.
Mar. 18- Times suddenly declines due to three minor issues/ one-min. of edit time to correct.
Total time from submission to decline: 36 days, during which time I had retired from the SPD.
It is clear that the Seattle Times strung me along long enough to make me believe its interest in publishing the op-ed was genuine. In fact, what follows are some of the quotes I received from Editor Sharon Chan during the process. Actually, she seemed quite nice. However, she failed to give me the courtesy of replying to my final email questioning this dubious process.
Feb 12- “I think the submission has potential but we can only seriously consider submissions that meet our word length of 500 to 650 words. If you would like to trim and resubmit, we would be happy to take another look.”
Feb. 20- “I’m interested in your perspective. Because this is a high stakes topic, we would need sources for each of the facts/quotes…”
Mar. 13- “We would like to publish your op-ed and work through some
editing changes with you. We would be planning to publish this at some
point in the next four weeks, assuming we reach agreement on edits.”
Mar. 18- “I wish we could have shared your perspective with our readers
because I believe it would have added a needed perspective to the dialogue.
Sorry it didn’t work out. Sharon Chan.”
In the final email Ms. Chan included three items of concern:
#1. In one place I had mistakenly written NPR instead of PBS.
#2. I had placed quotation marks around a paraphrase of a quote that had not changed the essence of the quote one iota.
#3. I put quotes around three words intended to denote sarcasm, which I intended to convey
in this: Opinion-Editorial.
After hours of edits, footnotes and citations, the Seattle Times would like us
to believe they declined to publish this, “needed perspective to the
dialogue,” for a few final edits that took me less than a minute to correct.
How to Destroy a Police Department.
by
Steve Pomper
(This is a full version akin to the article originally submitted to the Seattle Times)
How do you take one of the most well-respected and emulated police departments in America and, almost overnight, turn it into an enfeebled version of its former self? One way is by having Seattle’s political leaders impose a social justice regime, which contaminates laws and policies, by subjecting police officers to political indoctrination, and, finally, by allowing the Department of Justice (DOJ) to impose a federal fiction.
Having recently retired after more than twenty-one years of service to the City of Seattle, and years earlier than I expected, I feel confident giving a street cop’s view of today’s Seattle Police Department (SPD) under a social justice regime and DOJ consent decree.
Since no one seems to be picking up the mantle publicly for Seattle’s cops, it seems we must speak for ourselves, if not collectively, then individually. I do not claim to speak for all of my brothers and sisters. However, as a street cop for over twenty-one years in one of America’s most notoriously liberal cities, I feel confident in speaking from my perspective about the Seattle Police Department (SPD). “As I say at every new-hire orientation session ‘you do not give up one single constitutional right when you pin on your badge.” Sgt. Rich O’Neill, Seattle Police Officers Guild President (The Guardian, June, 2013).
Social justice indoctrination begins benignly, first, by infusing a city government’s lexicon with inane leftist jargon and political correctness, which then leads to political indoctrination. Elliott Bronstein, of Seattle’s Office for Civil Rights, issued a memo last year, nudging city employees to refrain from using such horrendously racist and bigoted words as, “brown bag” and “citizen.” This leftist lunacy was reported as far away as the United Kingdom, thus elevating Seattle from a national laughing stock, to that of, at the very least, the English-speaking world.
Seeking to bolster this dubious distinction, at Seattle’s Hempfest 2013, city officials directed police officers to hand out bags of Doritos, labeled with instructions on how to comply with the new marijuana law, to the pothead throng illegally smoking marijuana in public. During a speech to the orange-fingered masses, Seattle’s City Attorney Peter Holmes cheered legalized pot. Perhaps Mr. Holmes should also have cops dole out bags of beer nuts to sidewalk drunks.
Even if I might agree with Mr. Holmes about certain drug policies, there is a matter of propriety. It was with obvious affection that Holmes shouted, “We did it!” to the cloud enveloped gathering. However, his speech to the Hempfest crowd also revealed his hostility toward police. Holmes has dubiously prosecuted several officers who were subsequently acquitted, but he is reluctant to prosecute Downtown street crime. Last year Holmes refused to prosecute twenty-eight chronic street criminals personally requested by Acting Police Chief Jim Pugel.
And then there is Seattle’s,Race and Social Justice Initiative’s (RSJI), whose slimy tentacles have slithered into every crack and crevice of city government. Police manuals, notices and directives are contaminated with social justice terms. City departments must now be social justice-compliant. Also, thanks to Peter Holmes, Seattle, unbelievably, is enforcing the law according to social justice rather than equal justice standards.
By definition, social justice treats people differently depending upon their group “victimization credentials.” By contrast, equal justice seeks to treat individuals equally as espoused in America’s founding documents and subsequent amendments.
Driving While License Suspended 3rd Degree (DWLS3) is a traffic crime, which generally results when a driver fails to pay a previous citation. Normally, officers issue citations to the violator during the traffic stop. With this law, officers must instead forward the citation to the city attorney’s office, so they can determine who gets cited and who does not according to social justice criteria. Assistant City Attorney Darby Ducomb said in a 2010 interview with Publicola.net that, “…city attorneys would decide which cases merited punishment.” Mr. Holmes, twice during a video interview with Publicola.net, stated that the DWLS3 policy is based in social justice because a high percentage of those cited happen to be minorities. When I questioned this policy in a series of articles in the police guild newspaper, the department investigated me for seven months. I was found to have done nothing wrong, but this had a chilling affect on officers’ free speech rights.
To reinforce the social justice message, Seattle now sends its cops to political indoctrination disguised as law enforcement training. The indoctrination includes a PBS produced video series: “Race: The Power of an Illusion,” which provides some valid scientific and historical information, but then instructors conflate this with invalid contemporary conclusions. The seminar perpetuates a view that white privilege and minority oppression are the preeminent rule in contemporary American society. This is a political perspective, not law enforcement training. If the situation was reversed and, for example, a conservative government mandated employees attend firearms safety classes, Seattle’s political left would never tolerate it.
On another battlefront, the DOJ descended on Seattle to further blemish this once stellar police department. The DOJ allegedly found that Seattle police officers’ uses-of-force violated suspects’ constitutional rights an absurd 20% of the time. Incredibly, the DOJ refuses to divulge the mystical methodology it used to arrive at such a ludicrous figure.
Enter Seattle University criminal justice professor and former DOJ statistician Matthew J. Hickman Ph.D. who debunked the DOJ report. In more thorough investigations, Professor Hickman arrived at a more lucid number of 3.5% of cases that might include violations. In a courageous, “Special to the Times: Department of Justice owes the Seattle Police Department an apology“ (Seattle Times, Feb. 8th, 2012), Hickman advised the SPD to, “call DOJ’s bluff, and settle for nothing less than a formal apology.” Despite this timely and credible defense of the SPD, Seattle city leaders ignored his advice. This insulting and costly federal consent decree gives the DOJ unprecedented access and illegitimate influence over Seattle’s understaffed, overstressed and overburdened cops.
In an interview conducted by the Seattle Police Guild’s, The Guardian, editor, Officer Chet Decker, Merrick Bobb, the federal monitor, who’s had his own share of controversy since coming to Seattle, offered this chillingly Orwellian statement: “Whatever the correct figure might be, it is not relevant to our task today. The feud is over, and past disagreements must not impede current progress. What I know for sure is that the settlement agreement embodies best practice in policing and that it is to the SPD’s and Seattle’s benefit that it be implemented regardless of what led up to it” (The Guardian, August, 2013). Regardless of what led up to it? For SPD officers, this is akin to having been falsely charged with a crime, exonerated, and then told you still have to serve a prison sentence.
Currently, Seattle’s so-called, mainstream, as well as fringe (not that one can easily discern the difference these days), media continue to refer to the consent decree as if there were no controversy regarding its fabrication and implementation. Consider this title from an NPR news story by, Martin Kaste, “Faith In Seattle Police ‘shaken’ By DOJ Investigation.” I read through several stories and watched and listened to others on TV and radio news broadcasts concerning the consent decree, while writing this article. Most reporters fail to put the consent decree in context. The fact this consent decree was controversial with regard to the DOJ’s dubious conclusions and its failure to release the methodology it used is no longer mentioned. The only mention is of a consent decree instituted due to a, “pattern and practice,” of police misconduct and physical abuse. How can this not lead to Seattle’s citizens falsely concluding that their honorable police force is staffed by physically abusive and morally corrupt thugs?
The good men and women of the SPD are under siege from the political left. Last summer, Merrick Bobb indicated he was not happy with a “lack of cooperation” from some within the SPD command staff. In an apparent reaction to this criticism, then Interim Police Chief Jim Pugel demoted one of the rank and file’s favorite chiefs, Assistant Chief Nick Metz, to Captain. The speculation among many officers was that A/Chief Metz was demoted as a direct result of his advocacy on behalf of Seattle’s embattled police officers. Interim Chief Harry Bailey, a good man, corrected this disrespect and re-promoted Metz to Assistant Chief.
What will the SPD look like after its sinew has been turned to flab? One fear is, “De-policing,” a phenomenon where cops avoid pro-active patrol. The good people of Seattle should understand this: “De-policing” is not about police apathy toward their jobs. It is about a federal and city government’s antipathy toward police. Today, it seems our own department is filing more complaints against officers than are the public. Criminals are being turned into victims while police officers are being treated like criminals.
Seattleites should be aware of this insidious, ideological disease infecting its police department. It is said that a community gets the law enforcement it deserves. Seattle has recently elected a new mayor, Ed Murray, whom I’ve met, and who is a nice man. However, he is still a very liberal politician who has not acknowledged the corruption behind this bogus, and expensive, consent decree. Whether or not Seattleites deserve the law enforcement they are getting, I’ll let them be the judge. After all, it is they who will suffer the consequences of their votes. And I suppose, now, I should prepare for my visit from the IRS.
If you ask people what is the greatest power a police officer has at his disposal most would probably answer, his gun, or the ability to use force up to and including lethal. After all the power to use physical force against another person is a significant one indeed. However, in the majority of instances when an officer must use force, especially lethal force, it’s a circumstance in which any person would be able to take the same actions. Officers use force for two primary reasons: to protect themselves or to protect others. We all enjoy this right.
These powers, though significant and necessary, become almost incidental to the true power of the police officer in a free country such as the United States of America. That true power is the authority to take away a free person’s liberty. Even if only for a short time, such as during a traffic stop or when detained for something minor like littering, the power to stop a person in the midst of conducting his daily work or leisure, is an awesome power indeed.
Think about it. If you’re walking down the street and some person told you to stop, you’d probably gesture creatively indicating what he could do with that command. But as a society we give a limited number of people the authority to detain and arrest people for investigation of an infraction, misdemeanor crime, or felony crime. When the police detain people to investigate a crime we tend to give the officer more of a benefit of the doubt. But when it comes to simple infractions, civil violations that don’t rise to the level of a crime, such as jaywalking or speeding, the power to deprive a person of their liberty takes on a higher significance. I always took this authority seriously and would have considered it an abuse of power if I had wielded it frivolously.
It is for this reason I oppose the proliferation of socialist-tinged laws, which are those laws that are designed to protect Peter from Peter, rather than, correctly, Peter from Paul. For example, do I think wearing a seatbelt is a good idea? No. I think wearing a seatbelt is a great idea. I use mine all the time and I encourage my family to use them because it is a great idea. I also encourage them to wear rain gear in inclement weather and to take their vitamins every day. These are also great ideas, but should the law enforce these great ideas? Of course not.
A law that gives me the authority to stop you when you’re not engaged in an activity that harms another is a bad law. If you’re driving down the street and a police officer sees you driving your car without a seat belt, harming no one, and putting no one at risk other than, potentially, yourself, he or she can stop you, deprive you of your liberty, and sanction you with a monetary penalty. Put simply, I think that’s just plain wrong.
I rarely refer to other columns or writers. There are just too many good ones, and I wouldn’t want to slight by omission if this became a habit (although, I do reserve the right to change this policy). However, after reading Daniel Henninger’s Wall Street Journal article this morning, I just had to pass it along to folks. Henninger has been a favorite of mine for some time now. In this column, the way he lists Russian President Vladimir Putin’s actions over the recent past and then compares Obama’s responses with former President Jimmy Carter’s actions during his presidency, is poignant indeed. The Russian and Chinese dangers are too serious to attempt a Chamberlain-styled diplomacy. But, I’ll let Daniel convey this message. Read Article.
If one everwonderswhere President Obama stands on a particularissue, ortopic, in general, in his heart, one needonlylook to whomhenominatesfor important government positionsand to his commentsregardingtheissues surrounding these nominations.
The Senate todayshowed a raresanitywhile under Harry Reid’s thumb, todaywhenseveral Democrats brokerankandvoted to block Debo Adegbile’snomination to headthe Department of Justice’s Civil Rights Division. Shame on all of thesenatorswhovoted for this ill-considered nomination.
Thecontroversysurrounding Mr. Adegbilecomes from his havingrepresentedconvicted cop-killer, Mumia Abu-Jamal, andhavingkept him from thenoose, electricchair, orlethalinjectionhemostcertainlywarranted. Ajuryfound Abu-Jamal guilty of, as severalwitnesses to thecrimetestified, running up on Officer Daniel Faulkner whiletheofficerwasconducting a “routine” trafficstopandshootingtheofficer in theback. After theofficershotbackandthenfell totheground, grievously wounded, Abu-Jamal walked over and shotthehelpless twenty-five year old officer again, in thechestandface.
President Obama, in a writtenstatement, wrote, “The factthat his nominationwasdefeatedsolely based on his legalrepresentation of a defendantrunscontrary to a fundamentalprinciple of our system of justice — andthosewhovoted against his nominationdeniedthe American people an outstandingpublicservant.”
This is not a matter of “solely” representing an accuseddefendant, to which everyone has a right. Even John Adams defendedthe British Soldiers accused of murder after what came to be known as, “The Boston Massacre.” Adegbile’sdefensebled over to advocacywhen decades after Abu-Jamal hadbeendulyconvicted and sentenced,heelected to assistthismurdererfurther, including getting his death sentence overturned.
Whatstrikes me most, as a policeofficer, is the President’s commentsfollowingAddgbile’sdefeat. As with his commentsfollowingtheincidentinvolving Harvard Professor Henry Louis “Skip” Gates that the Cambridge Police, “actedstupidly,” Mr. Obama tells us much about hiscore beliefs.
Similarly, followingAdegbile’sdefeat, andignoringthemassiveopposition by lawenforcement across America, from theofficerordeputy on thestreetalltheway up to thenation’s policechiefsandsheriffs, lawenforcementorganizations, andpoliceunions, Mr. Obama calledthevote a, “travesty based on wildlyunfaircharacterattacks against a goodandqualifiedpublicservant.”
Weallmakechoice in lifefor which we may one day have to account. Adegbilechose to defend, not a defendantwhoseinnocenceis rightlypresumed, but an alreadyconvicted cop-killerwhoseguilt a jury had pronouncedandwhosesentence a stateSupreme Courthadupheld before itwasoverturned. That, in and of itself, wasanothershameful–I’ll usethe President’s words—travesty based on wildlyunfaircharacterattacks against a goodandqualifiedpublicservant. His namewas Philadelphia Police Officer Daniel Faulkner.
I’vebeenthinking about politicaldefinitionslately. Itseemssomanypeopleprefer to stuffpeople they don’t even know into neatlittle descriptionboxes. Thisseems to be mosttrue with ideological people on eitherside of theaislewhotend to dehumanize their opponents. When I went through my free speech kerfuffle with Seattle a fewyearsback, althoughthosewhoknow me, know me to be kind, compassionate, andopen-minded, many on thepoliticalleftblasted me as a knuckle-dragging, jack-booted and racistthug. These werecomments from peoplewhodo not know me. Theyhearwords coming from someone with whichtheydisagreeandthenpaintthe speaker/writer with their ignorant bile.
There are many categories into which peoplefit, butthe non-ideological do not fitneatly. The lines are blurred; the boundaries overlap. For example, there are thosewho are predominately liberalbutwhoopposeabortion. There are conservativeswhoare pro-choice. Striking closer to home, libertarians alsohavethesedistinctions. With regard to theabortionissue, some libertarians support a pro-choice position with an emphasis on the woman. Other libertarians choose to emphasize a pro-life perspective and focus on theunbornchild. The latter viewseems to beenhanced by scientificadvances in perinatology and related medical science, which haveoccurred since Roe v. Wade, more than forty years ago.
But I digress. I thinkit is radiotalkshowhost, Larry Elder, whousesthephrase: republitarian, combining republican with libertarian to describe his liberty-minded blended audience of Republicans and libertarians. Thisconception would place republican over libertarian. Perhaps, liberpublican?
It is importantthatpeopledefine themselves politically, rather than conform to match a specific politicalideology. If you’re involved with a group of people who too narrowly define their political perspective, saying, “You’re not a liberal, conservative, or libertarian unless you believe…” then find another group. Suspect anyone whotellsyouthatyou are not libertarian becauseyou are pro-life, orforthatmatter, pro-choice. Define your own politicalperspective and retain your sacred independence of thought.
Last June there was a demonstrationheld in Concord N.H. Bothsides of thegundebate were in attendance. There were a fewtenseincidents as reported in the, New Hampshire Union Leader, which is not surprising with such a highlychargedissue. And, while my affinityandaffection are staunchly embedded with the pro-Second Amendment folks, one incident I watched on a video of theeventdisturbed me. Theincidentinvolved a pro-gun participantwhorefused to cooperate with thepolice to thepointwhereofficersapplied a Taser, arrested, andthenhauled, Daniel Musso, 52, of Brentwood, off to thestation. Sadly, all of thiswas avoidable, and once again, the cops are the scapegoats for someone else’s bad behavior.
Theproblem is thatmany pro-gun folks are nearly as ignorant of policeprocedures as those in the gun-control movement. To conveytheenvironment into which thepolicearrived, one needs to seethe video of theinteractionandaltercation. From thepoliceofficer’s mannerandwords, it appears the copswere not particularly keyed up. Theofficerinformed Mr. Musso thattheyhadreceivedcomplaintsregarding his belligerent behavior. When an officerdoesthis, he is presentinginformationthathe has receivedand which he or she is duty-bound to investigate. Theofficers are not clairvoyant; theydidn’t magically appear; theywereinvestigating a complaint received from a citizen.
At onepoint, Mr. Musso graspstheofficer by his shoulders—BIG MISTAKE! Youneverput hands on a cop in thismannerwhilehe or she is investigating an incident. NEVER! Now, of course,thetotality of thecircumstancescomes into play. Mr. Musso was a goodsizedman, andthough I havelittledoubt, watching from thecomfort of my desk, at my leisure,that Musso likely intendednoharm, hebothphysicallycontactstheofficerandattempts to turn him in another direction—away from Musso. Mr. Musso may knowhemeans the officernoharm, everyone else may believe Mr. Musso meansnoharm, buttheofficers cannot affordtheluxury of guessing at Mr. Musso’s intent. Nevertouch a policeofficerwhileheorshe is performing their duties.
Thesituationescalated from here. Mr. Musso, whoappeared to me, by his countenance and expression, to knowexactlywhathewasdoing (becauseit’shappened to me), employedwhatseems like passiveresistance.However, I’d askthat one lookclosely. Mussowas actively doing two things: He was refusing to comply with theofficers‘ simple instructions to place his hands behind his back, and he wasphysicallyresistingtheofficers’ attempts to place Musso into handcuffs.
Here are three officers, surrounded by a hostilecrowd, attempting to control a large manwho isrefusing to cooperate with thepolice, and yet there are still peoplewhocriticizethepolice, though they haven’t an ounce of police training. I heard one man in thecrowdyellrepeatedly, “Hey, he’s not fightingyou.” I understandtheman’s confusion as TV, movies, and videogames havetaughtmanythatit’s not a “fight” unless it’s a knock-down-drag-out. Well, when a policeofficer is conducting his or her duty, he or she has a right not to be touched, andthecitizen has an obligation to comply with an officer’s instructions. IfMussofeelshe has beenmistreated, there is a time and place to address thatlater.
When I usetheterm, ignorant, whenreferring to theaverageperson’s knowledge of policeprocedure, I’m not trying to be insulting, although I can seehowsome might bristle at thedescription. Hell, watchingincidents on video, or from a distance, I know there are evensome cops whosuccumb to the knee-jerk reactionbecauseitjustlookssodamnedbad.
However, ifonetakesthetime to dissectwhatactuallyoccurred, piece-by-piece, one may becomeenlightened. Onestill might not likeit, butone may be willing to givethe officers—the peopleactuallyinvolvedandwhosesafety is at risk—the benefit of thedoubtthatmost police officers have earned anddeserve.
I washappy to doit, andwhilewritingit, I thought back to my first Tea Party event. Itoccurred in thespring of 2009 at Westlake Plaza, in Downtown Seattle. Theeventwasorganized by one of the Tea Party’s founders, Keli Carender.
My wifeand I wenttogether, two neophyte demonstrators feeling like triangularpegstrying to fit into hexagonal holes. Thefirstpersonwemet, as we settled on a bench,wasanother “triangle,” realestateagent. The fifties-something woman told us itwasalso her firsteverpoliticalevent. Shesaidshe justhad to come. Like us, shefeltsostrongly about whatwashappening to our government in Washington D.C. under President Obama, andthe Democratic Congress, ramming colossal, nation-altering legislation down America’s throat, as itturns out, largely by deceit.
Theleft has beenremarkablyeffective in smearingthe “Tea Party,” which is quite a featwhenyouconsider there is no single, “Tea Party.” The Tea Party is essentially a movementmade up of like-mindedpeoplewho are tired of biggovernment nanny-statism and all thenonsenseitexcretes. Theleft, deftly applying Saul Alinsky tactics, has succeeded, certainly in the mainstream media, butsadly, also within somequarters of the Republican Party, in demonizing the Tea Party(ies).
Ifoneclaimsmembership in a Tea Party organization, or the Tea Party at large, one is attacked asracist, misogynistic, andbigoted in everyshape, mannerandconception. Onedoesn’t simplyhold a differing opinion. One is not merely an opponent with whomtheleft can debate. One is an evilenemythattheleftneeds to destroy.
As John Carlson said on his KVI 570, Seattle, morning radio show today: “The right thinks the left is wrong, but the left thinks the right are bad people.” This sums up the state of political affairs quite accurately.
So, after all of the vicious lies directed from left to right, whydo I stillproudlyconsidermyself a member of the Tea Party movement? Because,the left does not define me. I am defined by how I live my lifeeverydayandhow I treat thepeople I deal with.
When I hear someone like Senate Leader Harry Reid, or House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi, orevenworse, President Barak Obama so coldly disparagetheso-called Tea Party with callous, condescendingandevencrudeterms, I cringefor our country. Fortheparty that calledfor civility in politics, many Democratssurehave a peculiar, andmalicious, way of showingit. “Teabagger?” This, obscene invective directed at fellow American citizens, whom he supposedly represents, from a U.S. president?
One truedifference between theleft of todayandthat of even ten or fifteen yearsago, is that, even during President Clinton’s administration, even with his obviousflaws, I neverfelt like I was not welcome in theroom. Today’s Democrats leave me feeling, as a fellow American citizen,that not only am I not welcome in the room, I’m not welcome to stand in the hallway.
“As I say at every new-hire orientation session ‘you do not give up one single constitutional right when you pin on your badge’” (The Guardian, June, 2013). Sgt. Rich O’Neill, President Seattle Police Officers Guild.”
Note: The following article represents my own views. In exercising my First Amendment rights, I do not speak for anyone other than myself.
Seattle media, again without context, has broadcastyetanotherreport of theeffects of the DOJ Consent Decree imposition of newpolicies on Seattle’s policeofficers. In thiscase, it has to do with policeuse-of-forcereporting.
It is important to remind everyone thattheconsentdecreeis based upon a fraud committed against the good men and women of the Seattle Police Department. Thelocalmediavirtuallyignoringthisfraud is a testament to theanti-police bias of localmedia.
Thatthe City of Seattle is wasting millions of its citizens’ dollars on a federalfictionaidedandabetted by Seattle’s media, politicians, administrators, crisis entrepreneurs, andthepastandcurrentpolicechiefs, is a scandal. However, it is a scandal that I’m sure will continue to go onignored.