Mayors in several major U.S. cities are demanding that Congress make it illegal for the federal government to deploy officers and agents to stop rioters from destroying federal property.
According to the Associated Press, “The mayors of Portland, Oregon, and five other major U.S. cities appealed Monday to Congress to make it illegal for the federal government to deploy militarized agents to cities that don’t want them.”
In the letter, the six mayors write of the riots now occurring almost nightly in their cities: “We are encouraged that so many of our residents are exercising their First Amendment rights to stand up against” police injustices. “At the same time, we are outraged that the administration has responded to these First Amendment-protected gatherings by authorizing the deployment of riot-gear clad forces.”
These “First Amendment-protected gatherings” have been incredibly violent and destructive. By July 5, nearly two dozen Americans had lost their lives in direct connection with riots around the country. Among those killed was 38-year-old Chris Beatty. A former college football player for Indiana University, Beaty, reportedly, was killed during a protest when he attempted to come to the aid of two women who were bing mugged. Another victim was Italia Marie Kelly, who was trying to leave a protest in Davenport, Iowa, when she was shot and killed. Yet another victim was Jose Gutierrez. While looters ravaged local businesses on June 1 in Chicago, the 28-year-old was fatally shot. Gutierrez, reportedly, was just an innocent bystander.
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These deaths are tragic and unacceptable crimes committed directly as a result of the unlawful violence leftist radicals have unleashed on American cities. In addition to loss of life, the riots have targeted stores, police buildings, and courthouses, some of them federal property.
None of these violent actions and crimes, intrinsic to the nightly riots this summer, have anything to do with the First Amendment, which does not protect indiscriminate violence against life and property.
Nonetheless, the mayors attaching their names to the letter sent to Congressional leaders demand that federal agents be removed from their cities, where they have been placed to protect federal property from certain destruction.
“As mayors, we will not sit idly by and accept the administration’s unilateral deployment of federal forces to our cities,” the mayors declared. “The safety and well-being of our residents is paramount, and when it comes to the security of our cities, we welcome partnership, not partisan threats.”
Signing this letter are Mayors Lori Lightfoot (Chicago), Jenny Durkan (Seattle), Ted Wheeler (Portland), Tim Keller (Albuquerque), Muriel Bowser (Washington, D.C.), and Quinton Lucas (Kansas City).
For background, Chicago Mayor Lori Lightfoot, a Democrat, served as a federal prosecutor from 1996 to 2002. As mayor, she was a proponent of aggressive lockdowns and has claimed to have personally patrolled the city to enforce social distancing, according to the Chicago Tribune. On the riots, however, she has been accused by Chicago Alderman Raymond Lopez of abandoning Chicago neighborhoods while working to protect downtown areas.
Seattle Mayor Jenny Durkan, a Democrat, might be considered part of the “establishment,” or the burgeoning American aristocracy. Durkan is the daughter of former Democrat politician Martin Durkan, who served in the U.S. House of Representatives and in the Washington State Senate from 1959 to 1975. Like Lori Lightfoot, Jenny Durkan is a former U.S. attorney, nominated for the post in the Western District of Washington in 2009 by President Obama. She was later considered a front-runner to replace Attorney General Eric Holder, a post ultimately occupied by Loretta Lynch. In 2012, after “black bloc” members vandalized a federal courthouse and three suspects were arrested, “Durkan’s office convinced a federal judge to imprison the activists, some for up to five months, in an effort to force them to testify against their peers in the Pacific Northwest’s radical left,” Seattle Weekly reported. In the spring of 2020, Durkan let the radicals she once opposed run amok in the streets. The now-dismantled “CHOP/CHAZ” set up by rioters and in which murder and mayhem ruled the day, had a “block party atmosphere,” Durkan told CNN’s Chris Cuomo, arguing, when asked how long it might last, that “We could have the Summer of Love.”
Portland Mayor Ted Wheeler, a Democrat, is the son of wealthy industrialist Sam Wheeler, who was executive vice president of Willamette Industries, a Fortune 500 forest-products company ultimately absorbed by industry giant Weyerhauser. During his mayoral campaign, Wheeler promised to understand that “every dollar we spend came from a taxpayer and we need show our respect for how hard that taxpayer worked to earn those dollars by spending them wisely.” In response to the riots, Wheeler has made minor attempts to fortify law enforcement by requesting deployment of the National Guard in the city. Oregon governor Kate Brown ultimately only sent 50 National Guard staff to Portland where, she said, they would “serve in a support function only.” Despite his campaign protestations that he would respect taxpayer’s property as represented by the money his city would take from them in the form of taxes, Wheeler ultimately threw his hat in with the rioters, who delight in destroying lives, property, and freedom, joining the front lines of the “protest” in front of the Portland Federal Court House. There he was seen “pumping a black power fist,” National Review noted. Moving with the rioters closer to the courthouse, he was tear-gased along with them by federal officers trying to protect the courthouse from pillage and fire. His security team then whisked him to safety, away from the riotous crowd that increasingly and aggressively indicated that it didn’t appreciate his presence.
Albuquerque Mayor Tim Keller, a Democrat, is the son of a banker. Wikipedia claims that he is co-founder of Digital Divide Data (DDD), a firm operating in Asia and Africa that provides web research, content services, data cleanup, and other related services. His official bio refers to this obliquely, stating that he “lived for several years in Cambodia where he ran the nation’s first IT social enterprise focused on hiring land mine victims and other disadvantaged persons.” DDD claims that its clients include Amazon, Microsoft, Stanford University, the Ford Foundation, and UNICEF, among many others. Mayor Keller’s wife, Elizabeth, is a Rhodes Scholar currently employed by Sandia National Laboratories. Mayor Keller plans to “reallocate” $10 million in annual funding from his city’s police department to a new “Community Safety Department” and, by signing the letter with his fellow Democrat mayors, openly opposes federal law enforcement efforts in his city, something the head of the city’s police union favors. “This is not a new concept,” said Albuquerque Police Officers Association President Shaun Willoughby on local Fox News affiliate KRQE News 13. “The FBI, the ATF, the DEA, even the secret service, Department of Homeland security. We need all the help we can get. We’ve been working with these partners for decades.” Notably, the controversy over policing in Albuquerque comes as the city faces an existing shortage of officers that looks set to worsen dramatically “as the police union … released its annual survey of police officers in which 80 percent of responding officers said they’re considering looking for other jobs.”
In Washington, D.C., Muriel Bowser, a Democrat, once supported “tough-on-crime” measures including floating a proposal that would allow police to execute warrantless searches in some cases. Bowser, though, is a fervent fan of gun-control measures, admitting that she “hates guns.” As riots enveloped her city, Mayor Bowser instituted an 11 p.m. curfew, which critics said was too late to do any good. White House Press Secretary Kayleigh McEnany called the mayor’s response to the riots “befuddling.” The mayor “didn’t issue a curfew until 11 p.m.” McEnany noted on Fox and Friends. “At 10 p.m. you had St. John. I think when you look at some of the befuddling actions like right here in the mayor of D.C. didn’t issue a curfew until 11 p.m. Well, guess what? At 10 p.m. you had St. John’s Church burning. Several other cities had curfew at 4 p.m., 5 p.m., 6 p.m.” Though her response to the riots was mild, her response to American liberties during the spring coronavirus panic was anything but. In March, the New York Post reported, “Mayor Muriel Bowser is threatening residents of Washington, DC, with 90 days in jail and a $5,000 fine if they leave their homes during the coronavirus outbreak.”
Kansas City Mayor Quinton Lucas, a Democrat, joined the faculty of law at the University of Kansas in 2012, where he teaches courses on contracts, securities regulations, and federal administrative law. Though Lucas now has signed the multi-governor letter opposing federal law enforcement, days earlier his office indicated that it welcomed federal efforts. “The day before Kansas City Mayor Quinton Lucas said publicly that he learned about Operation LeGend on Twitter, a letter with his signature was sent to a Justice Department official embracing the concept of a surge of federal law enforcement to assist with violent crime investigations,” the Kansas City Star reported. Mayor Lucas has been a strong supporter of mandatory mask mandates, though a photo of him posing without a mask on with seven women at Lake of the Ozarks has generated considerable controversy. Though eager to force everyone to wear a mask, he was meekly polite when responding to rioters in his city. Though he was properly critical of the rioters who attacked Kansas City, according to local ABC affiliate KIDK, the mayor plead with the scofflaws to “please just go somewhere else.”
If these Democrat mayors had the same zeal for upholding the law and protecting lives and properties on their city’s streets as they have had for locking people in their own homes to fight a virus that poses only a very minor risk, we would have seen far less death, destruction, and mayhem across the nation this summer.
Photo: AP Images
Dennis Behreandt is a research professional and writer, frequently covering subjects in history, theology, and science and technology. He has worked as an editor and publisher and is a former managing editor of The New American.
