Recently in Policing Category

The Association for Los Angeles Deputy Sheriffs has this post with the above title.

Efforts by state and local politicians in California to direct local law enforcement to not cooperate with the federal government may score points in the world of politics. In the real world, public safety is going to suffer.

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A more immediate consequence of refusing to cooperate with federal law enforcement may be a decrease in funding, personnel, and equipment provided by federal authorities to local task forces which enforce California state laws. These task forces, including those led by the Sheriff's Department in Los Angeles and others across the state, combat a myriad of state crimes that include human trafficking, gangs, drugs, auto/cargo theft, hate crimes, and environmental crimes. Political decisions to end cooperation with federal authorities on their law enforcement priorities may result in the federal Department of Justice deciding to remove these resources and direct them to states not antagonistic to federal law enforcement. Such a move would diminish public safety in Los Angeles and across California, where local law enforcement is already understaffed and underfunded.

At the end of the day, refusing to cooperate with federal law enforcement may be a winning political strategy; it is not a winning public safety strategy.

Ed Kozak in his Lifezette article yesterday notes that one prominent crowdfunding site turned its back on police officers targeted for murder because the lawsuit they aim to file does not promote "harmony:"

The website YouCaring, which describes itself as a company fostering "compassionate crowdfunding," has sent a loud and clear message to law enforcement officers across the country: It finds pro-police causes to be too "controversial" to host.

On Sunday the crowdfunding site removed donation pages set up by Donna Grodner, a lawyer who is suing Black Lives Matter and its leaders. Their legal action is on behalf of Baton Rouge police officers who were targeted for assassination by assailants inspired by Black Lives Matter rhetoric.

"In alignment with our mission, we removed this fundraiser because it was not within our community guidelines around promoting harmony," YouCaring chief marketing officer Maly Ly told PBS in an email. "We are not the right platform to air grievances, or engage in contentious disputes or controversial public opinion."

Jim Norman reports for Gallup:

WASHINGTON, D.C. -- Overall confidence in the police has risen slightly in the past two years, with 57% of Americans now saying they have "a great deal" or "quite a lot" of confidence in law enforcement -- matching the overall average for the 25-year Gallup trend.

The reversion to the mean is good news, but there are some disturbing trends in the crosstabs.

Though the overall numbers have rebounded, the years of national turmoil have only deepened the divide in the confidence that Americans of different ages, ethnicities and political beliefs say they have in the police. The loss of confidence is most apparent among Hispanics, liberals and those younger than age 35.

Over half a century after the Civil Rights Act of 1964, the divisions by race and ethnicity should have diminished, but race-baiting by "activists" whose careers depend on division make things worse instead of better.  In addition, our young are attending educational institutions that have become more uniformly left wing over the years.  I believe this produces a Reverse Kingsfield Effect where young people enter college with some degree of common sense and walk out "with a skull full of mush."

Baltimore is a model liberal city, progressive all the way.  Not a Republican in sight. When a small-time drug dealer, Freddie Gray, died under suspicious circumstances in police custody, the six officers involved were forthwith charged with numerous crimes, up to and including murder (none was convicted of anything, however).

The U.S. Supreme Court has once again unanimously reversed the Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit on a criminal justice issue.  This time it was the Notorious Ninth's evasion of Supreme Court jurisprudence on police liability for allegedly excessive force.  In this case, police reasonably fired their weapons when a person in a shack they were searching pointed a gun at them.  It turned out to be a BB gun, but the officers did not know that at the time.

If law enforcement officers make a "seizure" of a person using force that is judged to be reasonable based on a consideration of the circumstances relevant to that determination, may the officers nevertheless be held liable for injuries caused by the seizure on the ground that they committed a separate Fourth Amendment violation that contributed to their need to use force? The Ninth Circuit has adopted a "provocation rule" that imposes liability in such a situation.

We hold that the Fourth Amendment provides no basis for such a rule. A different Fourth Amendment violation cannot transform a later, reasonable use of force into an unreasonable seizure.

The Association for Los Angeles Deputy Sheriffs has this post with the above title:

As the nation gets ready for Memorial Day, a day to remember the people who died while serving in the nation's armed forces, the past week signaled a welcome change in attitude towards law enforcement from the highest leadership in the nation. From the symbolic act of lighting the White House in blue during that week to an executive action directing a review of federal law that could lead to legislation making it a federal crime to attack law enforcement officers, there has been a sea of change in support for law enforcement.
 
Under the prior administration, law enforcement was often in the crosshairs of a rush to judgment. The pattern that started from the first days with the knee jerk condemnation of Cambridge Police Sergeant James Crowley for "acting stupidly," and continued non-stop with the invitation to the White House of a rapper who had a song dedicated to a fugitive cop killer, or using a police memorial service to defend anti-police protestors and lecture on criminal justice "reform" and gun control. 

Kent noted that an unrepentant terrorist will be honored in this year's NYC Puerto Rico Day parade (with Mayor de Blasio proudly marching in step).

The Black Lives Matter movement will receive the Sydney Peace Prize, an award given by the Sydney Peace Foundation -- part of the University of Sydney -- and be honored at an event in the city in November, the foundation announced this week.

Black Lives Matter was chosen for allegedly "building a powerful movement for racial equality, courageously reigniting a global conversation around state violence and racism. And for harnessing the potential of new platforms and power of people to inspire a bold movement for change at a time when peace is threatened by growing inequality and injustice," the foundation's website states.

I'm happy to report that I know almost nothing about pop culture.  One of the things I was lucky enough to miss out on was a comic book series, now defunct after just two weeks of dismal sales. backed by anti-police activist Ta-Nehsei Coates.  The comic portrayed police as sadistic villains who earn the contempt of virtuous people.

Ta-Nehesi Coates may be the darling of the liberal elites in publishing houses and college campuses, but comic book readers have a better BS detector for separating fact from fiction... 

It would be a good thing if black lives actually mattered to Black Lives Matter, but apparently this is not to be," Otis told LifeZette. "BLM ought to know that the leading cause of death among young black males is murder. What the movement should be doing, then, instead of the comic book business, is advancing programs that reduce the murder rate."

The Washington Post has this article:  "Trump to light White House blue to support police who face 'unfair defamation and villifiication'."

Trump's predecessor, President Barack Obama, had struggled to balance his rhetorical support for the police with empathy for the protesters. But Trump has more vocally offered backing to the police.

"We must end the reckless words of incitement that give rise to danger and violence, and take the time to work with cops, not against them, not obstruct them -- which is what we're doing," Trump said.

Trump alluded to violence in cities such as Baltimore and Chicago, saying that poorer, more disadvantaged residents often suffer the most. "We cannot stand for such violence; we cannot tolerate such pain," he said. "My administration is totally determined to restore law and order and justice for all Americans, and we're going to do it quickly."

Heather MacDonald has this article at City Journal:

Whatever FBI director James Comey's alleged failings in regard to the investigation of Hillary Clinton's email server and Russian election interference, his precipitous sacking is a loss for America's police officers and public order.

The man whom President Donald Trump now calls a "showboater" and "grandstander" gave candidate Trump the most powerful message of his campaign: policing matters. Months before Trump decried the media's "false narrative" about policing, Comey had warned that the "chill wind" blowing through American law enforcement was resulting in a rising homicide toll among black people. Comey was virtually the only official within the Obama administration to acknowledge publicly the disastrous impact that the Black Lives Matter movement was having on public safety; Obama contemptuously rebuked him for doing so.

Stuart Varney has this interview with actor Fabio Lanzoni.

He also spoke out against California Governor Jerry Brown's Proposition 57, which modifies the state's prison system.

"He is releasing tens of thousands of criminals back in the streets and also he lowered the crime into misdemeanor," he said, and added that "cops are very demoralized."

"You saw it happen to Europe, the politicians in Europe--they neuter the law enforcement and now they have to be shot before they can even return the fire... you don't want this movie coming to a theater near you," he said.

Hmmm.  Should we elect him governor in 2018?  California's record with actor-governors is mixed, but they have been better than some of the non-actors.

In Birchfield v. North Dakota, the Supreme Court held that breath tests, but not blood tests, may be administered without a warrant as a search incident to lawful arrest for drunk driving.  The Court also held that motorists may not be criminally punished for refusing to submit to a blood test on the basis of legally implied consent.  In Missouri v. McNeely, a plurality of the Court held that the natural dissipation of alcohol in a motorist's blood stream alone does not create a per se exigency that would justify a non-consensual blood draw without a warrant.

Criminal Justice Legal Foundation filed a brief in a companion case to Birchfield arguing that a motorist's statutorily implied consent to submit to a search of his or her breath, blood, or urine after lawful arrest for suspicion of DUI falls within the consent exception to the Fourth Amendment's warrant requirement.  We argued that requiring all law enforcement officers to secure a warrant after lawful arrest is impractical due to the vast differences in resources in some jurisdictions.  We also argued that it was reasonable for a state to mandate consent as an alternative to a warrant as a condition of using its public roadways.  The public's interest in protecting innocent people and keeping drunkards off the roads is significant in comparison to the privacy interests of an arrested motorist who made the choice to drink and drive.

Last week, the high Court's jurisprudence tied the hands of law enforcement and hindered prosecutors from obtaining probative evidence of blood alcohol concentration levels in at least two incidences.

Yesterday, the Federalist Society hosted a teleforum discussing federal oversight of local police departments.  The link is here.  The participants were Chuck Canterbury, President of the Fraternal Order of Police, and Vanita Gupta, formerly the top civil rights prosecutor for President Obama's Civil Rights Division at DOJ.

Conservative speakers may get shoved off campus by liberal fascists, but Heather Mac Donald, for one, and her assiduously researched views, are welcome in this space.  I commend her excellent recent article, which notes, among other things:

The most immediate goal of the Trump administration should be to change the elite-driven narrative about the criminal-justice system. That narrative, which holds that policing is lethally racist, has dominated public discourse since the fatal shooting of Michael Brown in Ferguson, Missouri, in August 2014. In response, officers are backing off of proactive policing, and violent crime is rising fast: 2015 saw the largest one-year spike in homicides nationwide in nearly 50 years. That violent-crime increase has continued unabated through 2016 and into the early months of 2017. A Trump administration official--perhaps Attorney General Sessions, or the president himself--should publicly address the question of what we expect from police officers: Do we want them to be proactive and to try to stop crime before it happens? Or do we want them to be purely reactive, responding to crime only after someone has been victimized?

The headline of this post is taken from today's excellent Wall Street Journal piece by Jason Riley, with whom I spoke on Monday.  I had known from reading his work that he understands what's actually going on out there, but now, having had the chance to talk to him, I am doubly impressed.