Transatlantic attack on U.S. police

By Toby Westerman

There is a transatlantic attack on the system of local policing in the United States. Liberal politicians in the United States are now joined by liberal British journalists in an attempt to bring neighborhood policing under the authority of the central government in Washington D.C.

Washington's mania for control over virtually every facet of a citizen's life is being expressed in an effort to establish what amounts to a national police force. The current rationale for federal control is the number of U.S. citizens killed by police, with the Michael Brown incident in Ferguson, Missouri given as the prime example. All reasonable accounts of Mr. Brown's encounter with the Ferguson police justify the use of lethal force, but the media/liberal political narrative of an innocent black man murdered by the police continues unabated.

The latest entry of anti-police paranoia is from the liberal British newspaper, the Guardian. In an online article entitled Congress awaits 'monumental' police reform as mandatory kill count advances, the Guardian describes the process behind legislation in the Congress of the United States to establish a federal data base tracking the use of lethal force by local police across the nation. The Guardian has its own on-going count of the use of lethal force by U.S. police (termed "homicides").

The Guardian count supplies raw numbers, with little accompanying information on the incidents.

For a number of powerful liberal U.S. lawmakers, however, raw numbers are enough.

The Guardian's article on "police reform" quotes Congressman Steve Cohen(D) of Tennessee, who praised the Guardian for "These statistics" which Cohen believes "will be most helpful in making the case [for a federal data base]."

Cohen introduced December 11, 2014 the National Statistics on Deadly Force Transparency Act, H.R.5866, which requires that any use of lethal force by police be investigated and, if deemed appropriate, the prosecution of the officer(s) involved. Police non-compliance with the reporting stature would mean a loss of federal funds.

"We can tie reportage to financial outlays and generally make police do things," said Cohen to the Guardian.

On June 2, 2015 California Democrat Barbara Boxer joined with New Jersey Democrat Cory Booker to introduce in the Senate similar legislation called the Police Reporting of Information, Data and Evidence (Pride) Act, (S.1476). Details are given on Boxer's Senate office website. Boxer also praised the Guardian's efforts during an interview with the British newspaper.

There is, however, some acknowledgement among liberal politicians that police sometimes face individuals who are not acting rationally. The Guardian article stated that it found that "at least 27%" of people killed during encounters with police thus far in 2015 were identified as having a "mental health disorder."

The fair-minded individual could well speculate that the "27%" or so having a "mental health disorder" may on occasion act in a manner which is not only irrational, but also very threatening to the police and general public.

The Guardian article mentioned that Wisconsin Representative Gwen Moore has introduced legislation that would provide funding for state and local law enforcements to establish training programs for officers confronting mentally ill people.

Moore told the Guardian that she wanted officers to have "at least have some clues about how to approach people with mental illness, and that they be treated as mentally ill people rather than criminals."

What Moore misses is that some "mentally ill people" may be acting like criminals and pose a direct, dire threat to themselves and others.

The unstated but stunning reality, which U.S. liberals and their friends at the Guardian completely ignore, is that police officers are involved daily in coping with the "mentally ill," individuals who are under the influence of hallucinogenic drugs, and people who simply have no respect for any authority from whatever source. The police do a dangerous job, and their seems to be little interest in how many officers give their lives in the line of duty, and what kind of people kill police officers.

While we are keeping statistics, why don't we as a nation gather and widely disseminate information on the following:

– Statistics on violently mentally ill on the streets of the United States which, incidentally, has followed the closure of long-term psychiatric hospitals in various states;

– Statistics on the number of violent incidents in U.S. perpetrated by individuals whose behavior was influenced by use hallucinogenic drugs, (this writer would include especially potent varieties of marijuana);

– studies on the effects on behavior of common street drugs and prescription drug abuse;

– studies on the potency of commonly available varieties of marijuana.

Police officers are human and make mistakes, but the answer to reducing the use of lethal force by police resides primarily in the reduction of the number of critically mentally ill on our streets, the rejection by society of all forms of hallucinogenic drugs (this writer includes marijuana as a possible hallucinogenic) and the recognition again that police officers are our protectors, not our enemies.

Giving Washington more power will not reduce the number of times police must use lethal force, but will intrude Leftist political ideology into local law enforcement. The advocates of Leftist dogma roost in Washington D.C. Americans should be reducing federal influence in local affairs (our schools, for instance), not expanding it.

The reality is that local police are seeking to keep us safe from the social ills which, in large part, are products of liberal/Leftist policies. Life for civilians and police alike would be made much easier if individuals would simply obey lawful police orders.

[Note also: INA Today exposes the Marxist nature of the Kremlin elite in UNCOVERING THE COMMUNIST STRATEGY OF TODAY'S RUSSIA, available at www.inatoday.com.]

© Toby Westerman