By Matthew Vadum ——Bio and Archives--August 26, 2015
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Across the country local law enforcement--state, county, municipalities--the boots-on-the-ground officers are the ones dealing with these people in day-to-day operations,' and they're hesitant because they're always portrayed in the media here lately as the criminals, and the criminals are like the victims and the media is just taking it and running with it.But the attack itself was not the only indignity the policeman suffered. As the Manhattan Institute's Heather Mac Donald writes at National Review Online:
Several witnesses to the beating posted photos of the bloodied, inert, and prostrate detective on social media, accompanied by celebratory gloating similar to the social-media triumphalism after two New York City police officers were assassinated last December. A typical post read: "Pistol whipped his # to sleep," under the hashtag #FckDaPolice.Boackle said the cop's wife and children saw the unofficial crime scene photos on the Internet "before the department was ever able to notify the family that [the attack] had taken place." The police officer's reluctance to use reasonable force or even to make efforts to defend himself in this case is an example of what St. Louis, Missouri, police chief Sam Dotson quite properly calls the "Ferguson effect." Police officers, particularly Caucasians, are becoming increasingly reluctant to do their jobs and follow proper police procedure when dealing with blacks because they fear their actions will be characterized as examples of race-driven police brutality. This bestows on some black Americans a kind of immunity from legal accountability, a condition David Horowitz calls "black skin privilege." (See my recent FrontPage article, Black Skin Privilege: To Be Above the Law.) Police officers are laying off of discretionary enforcement activity and the "criminal element is feeling empowered," Dotson said. Virtually everything police do is now characterized as racist as police are routinely vilified and violent attacks on them are cheered on by the Left. Police are responding by doing less policing and avoiding neighborhoods perceived as hostile to law enforcement. As Mac Donald observes:
In Baltimore, following anti-cop riots and the indictment of six officers for the death of drug dealer Freddie Gray, arrests dropped 60 percent in May compared with arrests the previous year. In New York City, criminal summonses, a powerful gauge of proactive enforcement, were down 24 percent through July, compared with the same period the previous year; total arrests were down 16.5 percent. Arrests in Los Angeles are down 8 percent city-wide, and even further in some of the highest-crime areas. In the LAPD's Central Division, home to the chaotic, squalid Skid Row, arrests are down 13 percent, while violent crime is up 57 percent.In some cities, government officials have essentially ordered police to let black criminals run wild. During the rioting that followed the suspicious April 19 death of career criminal Freddie Gray in police custody, Baltimore mayor Stephanie Rawlings-Blake (D) ordered police not to enforce the law against black looters. The mayor infamously admitted after riots began that she gave space "to those who wished to destroy." Of course, this police slowdown is going to hurt the poor and blacks the most. If a cop knows politicians are ready to throw him to the wolves at the first sign of trouble, and he has a choice between patrolling a crime-infested inner-city neighborhood and an a relative tranquil suburban area, guess which area won't get patrolled. Police are also justifiably "fearful of being caught on a cell phone video that will not show the full engagement with a resisting suspect," Mac Donald wrote previously. "And I think that they may be backing off on discretionary policing, the low-level misdemeanor offenses. They're still responding to 9-1-1 calls for violent felonies, but they're backing off, and criminals are getting emboldened." "Any cop who uses his gun now has to worry about being indicted and losing his job and family," a New York City cop confided in Mac Donald. When America's police officers are afraid of doing their jobs, the country is in deep trouble.
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Matthew Vadum, matthewvadum.blogspot.com, is an investigative reporter.
His new book Subversion Inc. can be bought at Amazon.com (US), Amazon.ca (Canada)
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