By Alex Newman
Under pressure from far-left elements and powerful establishment forces, the Democratic Party is becoming increasingly radical in its opposition to and even hatred of police. This escalating enmity against law-enforcement has already resulted in Democrat-controlled cities defunding and voting to “abolish” police forces, even as cops and law-abiding citizens across America are under siege. Under the guise of “police reform,” major moves are underway to further handcuff officers, including efforts to federalize controls and policies of local departments. And the demonization of America’s police as “racists” by Democrat leaders is accelerating. But the worst may be yet to come.
Nowhere was the growing animus against police by Democrats more clear than during the 2020 primary for the presidential nomination. Indeed, the whole campaign was like a giant exercise in anti-law enforcement extremism. Among the leading candidates were multiple individuals who claimed that the entire justice system is “racist” and part of “white supremacy.” Some candidates even proposed abolishing entire agencies, ranging from local police departments to federal law-enforcement agencies such as the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE).
Even among the Democrats who do not openly say they want to shutter whole agencies and departments, there has been practically universal clamoring among the party’s presidential candidates and many in Congress to handcuff law enforcement rather than criminals. The push to release huge numbers of criminals from jails and prisons is picking up momentum, too. And if the party gets its way, experts and advocates for law and order warned that criminals would get free rein while Americans and those who protect them suffer.
The Democratic Party’s platform was also filled with hostility to police. In a section on criminal-justice reform, for instance, the party claims the current system is “failing to keep communities safe” and “failing to deliver justice.” “Police brutality is a stain on the soul of our nation,” the platform continues, as if the isolated incidents of brutality each year represented the norm in America rather than a rare exception. “Democrats believe we need to overhaul the criminal justice system from top to bottom,” the platform says, before offering specifics.
The problems with police in America include, according to the platform, that “Black and Latino communities” are supposedly “overpoliced.” Ironically, a Gallup survey of black Americans released in August revealed that more than eight in 10 want the same amount or more policing in their neighborhoods. Incredibly, the manifesto then goes on to claim that “millions of people in our country have good reason to fear they may lose their lives in a routine traffic stop, or while standing on a street corner, or while playing with a toy in a public park.” In other words, cops are killers on the prowl.
The change between the 2020 Democrat Platform and the 2012 version is dramatic. Just eight years ago, the same party called for stepped-up efforts to “keep cops on the street and support our police.” “We support efforts to ensure our courageous police officers and first responders are equipped with the best technology, equipment, and innovative strategies to prevent and fight crimes,” the platform added. Today, the goal is just the opposite: fewer police on the streets and fewer criminals behind bars. Demonizing police is also being done in tandem with calls for replacing as many officers as possible with “social workers,” “mental health counselors,” new welfare programs, and more.
To deal with the supposed evils of police, congressional Democrats are pushing a bill that would all but federalize America’s police departments. Under the so-called “George Floyd Justice in Policing Act of 2020,” which was passed with support from every Democrat member of the U.S House of Representatives, radical anti-police ideologues would place massive restrictions on the ability of police to do their job. Indeed, the architect and chief sponsor behind the bill was Representative Karen Bass (D-Calif.), who mourned the passing of mass-murdering communist dictator Fidel Castro as “a great loss to the people of Cuba.”
Among other concerns, the bill, which has not been approved by the Senate, would ban certain tactics such as chokeholds while further limiting the use of force. It would also mandate “racial bias” training, which President Trump ended in federal agencies because it was really just racist and communist propaganda known as “Critical Race Theory.” Military gear could no longer be provided in most cases to state and local agencies. Finally, the legislation, which passed with just three GOP votes in the House, would make it much easier for police officers to be persecuted and prosecuted for doing their job. It would even remove the requirement that an officer’s act be “willful,” meaning that federal prosecutors would not have to prove the officer intended to kill or harm a suspect.
Perhaps the most significant long-term danger to police coming from this anti-police propaganda campaign is the false notion that America’s police are “racist” supporters of “white supremacy” and “institutional racism.” This dangerous idea has moved from the fringes of the extreme Left straight to the mainstream of the party, with the narrative being peddled by top members of Congress, governors, party leaders, and more. And if it becomes accepted, it will drive a permanent wedge between police and the communities they serve while providing justification to those who would harm officers.
U.S. Senator Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.), for example, a leading lawmaker who for months was considered a front-runner in the Democratic primary, has shown increasing hostility to the men and women in uniform who protect and serve the American people. “It’s racist,” she said in New Orleans about the American criminal justice system, even as police in her hometown were grieving over the murder of a local sergeant that day. “I mean, front to back.”
It was hardly an isolated misstatement, either. When asked last April during a town hall at St. Anselm’s College what she would do to help keep police safe, she responded by blaming police and accusing them of racism. “Our criminal justice system is broken and right at the heart of that problem is race and we have to address this head on,” Warren said, claiming black Americans were being persecuted by the police.
Such attitudes have been expressed on numerous occasions by top Democrats at the local, state, and federal level — and also by cop-killing terrorists. Even among the leading contenders for the 2020 nomination, it almost seemed like a competition: Who can push the police-are-racist narrative the furthest? Joe Biden, who ended up getting his party’s nomination, argued that racism is entrenched in modern policing. “We don’t even consciously acknowledge it,” he said at a breakfast hosted by Rev. Al Sharpton. “But it’s been built into every aspect of our system.”
Biden’s main competitor in the 2020 Democratic primaries, Socialist Bernie Sanders, who played a key role in developing the Biden campaign’s own policies, expressed a similarly dim view of law-enforcement officers. Indeed, Sanders painted police as racist thugs who terrorize black communities. “In many black communities the police were not there protecting the people, but intimidating them,” he claimed, celebrating the “Black Lives Matter” movement for “educating the nation” about how racist police really are before calling for total federalization of police training and policy. “Tragically, cell phone video cameras were recording horrific examples of extreme police brutality, the taking of innocent lives by overly aggressive police action.”
Every major Democratic presidential candidate echoed that sentiment. South Bend, Indiana, Mayor Pete Buttigieg claimed that “all police work and all of American life takes place in the shadow of racism,” and that police killings of black Americans will continue “until we move policing out from the shadow of systemic racism.” Democrat U.S. Congressman “Beto” O’Rourke, meanwhile, argued that police are killing black people “solely based on the color of their skin.” There are endless examples of prominent Democrats at all levels making similar arguments. And as National Socialist Adolf Hitler’s propaganda minister explained, a lie told often enough will eventually be believed.
Ironically, the data completely contradict the phony anti-police claims of the race-mongering Democrats. According to a 2019 study published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences and a 2015 Department of Justice study of the Philadelphia Police Department, black and Hispanic police officers were just as likely — or even more likely — to shoot black suspects. Indeed, the study found that if there is a bias, it is actually against white suspects.
“It is a racial group’s rate of violent crime that determines police shootings, not the race of the officer,” explained law-enforcement expert Heather Mac Donald, a fellow with the Manhattan Institute who has spent years studying these issues. “The more frequently officers encounter violent suspects from any given racial group, the greater the chance that members of that racial group will be shot by a police officer.” But the truth rarely gets in the way of the Democratic Party effort to demonize law enforcement.
And while civilians are considered innocent until proven guilty, among Democrats, it seems police are always guilty no matter what. When Ferguson, Missouri, police officer Darren Wilson shot and killed Michael Brown in self-defense, both Senator Kamala Harris (D-Calif.) and Senator Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) tweeted that he was “murdered.” In reality, even the Obama-run Department of Justice concluded that Wilson acted in self-defense. No apologies were ever issued by either of the leading Democrat lawmakers turned failed presidential candidates. Senator Cory Booker (D-N.J.), Senator Kirsten Gillibrand (D-N.Y.), New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio, and countless more echoed those remarks. Similar hysteria and lies were unleashed in response to the death of Eric Garner.
The Democratic effort to paint law-enforcement officers and agencies as racist has been especially vicious when it comes to ICE. U.S. Senator Harris, Biden’s vice presidential pick, exemplified this trend well, publicly comparing the public perception of the agency with that of the Ku Klux Klan (KKK) during Senate questioning. “Are you aware of the perception of many about how the power and the discretion at ICE is being used to enforce the laws and do you see any parallels [with the KKK]?,” she asked ICE chief nominee Ronald Vitiello. Yes, seriously.
Far-left Representative Alexandra Ocasio-Cortez, meanwhile, compared ICE detention facilities housing illegal immigrants to “concentration camps” used by Germany’s National Socialist (Nazi) regime, conjuring up images of death camps that Hitler used to murder and torture millions of people. With this kind of rhetoric from prominent elected officials, it should hardly be a surprise when an unhinged lunatic targets law-enforcement agents.
This sort of dishonest and inflammatory rhetoric has already produced very dangerous fruit. Last summer, for instance, an Antifa activist carrying a rifle and “incendiary devices” was killed while trying to attack an ICE facility in Washington State. His goal was to set the building on fire, potentially killing hundreds of people including ICE officials and illegal immigrants being detained for hearings. And his manifesto against the “forces of evil” sounded like the rhetoric being spewed by Democrats from Congress and state legislatures to city and county commissions. Not long after that, shots were fired into two San Antonio buildings housing ICE offices.
ICE officials, who are merely enforcing the constitutional laws passed by the American people’s representatives, blasted the rhetoric that was producing such violence and hate. “Political rhetoric and misinformation that various politicians, media outlets and activist groups recklessly disseminate to the American people regarding the ICE mission only serve to further encourage these violent acts,” the agency said in a statement after the attack in Texas. “This disturbing public discourse shrouds our critical law enforcement function and unnecessarily puts our officers’ safety at risk.”
Senior officials also called out Democrats in elected office for remaining silent, calling on them to condemn the violence and threats. “It’s particularly disturbing that many of the same Democratic politicians, news organizations and other groups … have failed to condemn the hate-filled diatribes and violence generated by extremists on the left,” said Thomas Homan, who served as acting director of ICE. “In addition to the threats of violence, we see elected officials at the local, state and national level calling the Border Patrol, ICE and anyone that enforces our immigration law Nazis, racists, and obscene names…. We must not let political campaigns go from a war of words to a war where people are being killed and wounded. One civil war was enough.”
Outside the presidential candidates, these sentiments are also commonly expressed — and acted upon. Like many Democrat mayors and governors, New York Mayor Bill de Blasio, a radical Democrat with ties to Marxist movements, has ordered New York City police not to cooperate with ICE. He also wants the agency abolished. “ICE’s time has come and gone,” de Blasio said.
Senator Sanders, whose views would be a major component of a Biden administration, has also called for disbanding ICE. But he takes an anti-law enforcement attitude more generally, too. Indeed, he believes that felons should be allowed to vote — even while they are in prison. And from his own public statements, it is clear that the far-left lawmaker, who celebrated his honeymoon in the Soviet Union, would empty out America’s jails. By contrast, one of his campaign officials was caught on camera defending Soviet gulags (the regime’s vast network of forced-labor camps) and talking about the supposed need to put Trump supporters into “re-education camps.” He was not fired.
Perhaps even more alarming are the forces Sanders — an icon to a growing segment of the party — openly associates with. On his website, for instance, the Sanders campaign touted its endorsement by a radical organization called Dream Defenders. According to that group’s website, America must abolish police departments and prisons completely. “Police and prisons have no place in ‘justice,’” the pro-Sanders group openly argued on its website. “Police and prisons aren’t just racist but they work to enforce the separations of rich and poor.” The group has also publicly promoted the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine, an Islamist organization that is designated a terrorist group by the U.S. State Department.
Another major threat from liberal Democrats is the drive to nationalize law enforcement. While police and sheriff departments have traditionally been a function of local and county government — and sometimes state — there is an escalating trend toward having all police answer to bureaucrats and politicians in Washington. During the Obama administration, that effort came out into the open, with Attorney General Eric Holder and others openly working to usurp control over communities’ police agencies. Much of it is coming in tandem with the demonization of police.
When it comes to law enforcement, one party has made its position crystal clear. In cities where Democrats are most powerful, such as San Francisco, criminals roam free while prosecutors terrorize police who try to do their jobs. The hatred being whipped up against police by leading Democrats, from Congress to the 2020 presidential campaign, is dangerous. It represents a threat not just to the brave men and women who put their lives on the line to protect and serve the American people, but to the rule of law itself. It is time for the madness to stop — now — before even more people get hurt.