Last week the U.S. Department of Justice issued a scathing report about the Minneapolis Police Department three years after George Floyd died in police custody. Is this an honest review of the police department or is there something more happening? We’ll offer some insight in this episode of Analysis Behind the News, and suggest ways you can help protect your local community, as local policing is an important principle in upholding the Republic.
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As reported by The Epoch Times,
The Justice Department accused the Minneapolis police on Friday of a consistent pattern of violating constitutional rights, discrimination against minorities, and “excessive” and “unjustified deadly force” in policing.
The probe culminated in a report, released Friday, that accused the City of Minneapolis and the Minneapolis Police Department (MPD) of a pattern of violating civil rights, discrimination, and heavy-handed policing tactics.
“To be sure, many MPD officers do their difficult work with professionalism, courage, and respect,” the report’s executive summary reads. “Nevertheless, our investigation found that the systemic problems in MPD made what happened to George Floyd possible.”
Given that Biden’s DOJ, led by Attorney General Merrick Garland, has lost much of its credibility due to its political attacks on President Trump, its handling of J6, its targeting of the pro-life movement, and its overall ignoring the violence and property destruction of Antifa, Black Lives Matter, and Jane’s Revenge, its solution for the Minneapolis Police Department is no solution at all. Rather, it’s merely a targeted takeover of local police by the federal government.
The New York Times reported, “Federal oversight of local law enforcement agencies in the form of consent decrees — legally binding, court-enforced agreements — is the marquee method for overhauling the nation’s most troubled police departments, often after high-profile incidents of police brutality. Ferguson, Mo., the city where Michael Brown was killed by the police in 2014, has a consent decree in place. So do Baltimore, Chicago, Cleveland, Newark and New Orleans, among others.”
Notice anything in common with nearly all of the cities listed as having these reforms? They are on the top 20 list of cities that have the highest violent crime rates.
Two years ago, Axios reported, “Most police agencies in recent federally court-ordered reform agreements saw violent crime rates skyrocket immediately…. An Axios review of FBI and Justice Department data on all 12 agencies under consent decrees since 2012 found that seven of them experienced jumps in violent crime rates in two years compared to the two years before they entered into the consent decrees.”
The rise in crime was a reason why consent decrees were scrapped during the Trump administration. As The Guardian reported in 2020, “As a result, law enforcement agencies that practice racial profiling, use excessive force and other forms of unconstitutional policing are now free from federal oversight.”
“Federal oversight.” Those two words entirely describe what is wrong with law enforcement today. Yet, this is nothing new. Let me read to you a few paragraphs from the November 1976 issue of American Opinion, the predecessor of The New American, which The John Birch Society publishes.
Gary Allen wrote,
As Professor Cleon Skousen, former aide to the late F.B.I. Director J. Edgar Hoover, has observed: “The genius of the American founders was their shrewd concern for the future…. Our forebears were not willing to trade away long-range freedom for short-term solutions to problems. That is why the Constitution reserves police power to state and local governments.”
Thomas Jefferson warned that “when all governments shall be drawn to Washington as the center of power, it will become venal and oppressive.”
You don’t have to have a Ph.D. in history to realize that every dictator, regardless of his ideology, must federalize and control the local police. Director J. Edgar Hoover long ago warned that “Wherever Communists have been able to exercise any measure of control, their first step has been to hamstring and incapacitate law enforcement. Since tyranny is impossible without a nationally centralized constabulary, American wise men have always counselled against federal involvement in the functions of local police. If history is any guide, tyranny is inevitable once control of the police has been nationally centralized.”
For many decades, federal efforts have been launched to garner more control over local police. Where that has failed, organized leftists have made progress on establishing unaccountable bureaucracy in local communities that serve to restrict the abilities of the police. In the 1960s and 1970s, these were called civilian review boards.
Mr. Robert Welch, founder of The John Birch Society, wrote in the May 1966 JBS Bulletin,
Every Communist is taught, whether engaged in a riot or any other crime, to shout “police brutality” on every possible occasion. And the Civilian Review Boards are set up by Comsymps [Communist sympathizers] or their Liberal dupes and allies to use every such claim as “brutally” as possible to harass, demoralize, and frighten local police forces into a frozen hesitation about performing their proper duties. We again urge that our members and our [Support Your Local Police] committees oppose the formation or the maintenance of Civilian Police Review Boards, or any similar groups under whatever name, as actively and effectively as they can.
These boards and other related commissions by different names are responsible for making the job of enforcing the law much more difficult. Add to that a corrupt judicial system that favors criminals and the situation is ripe for rising crime and for calls from residents to just do something. Yet with the pressure from above coming from the Department of Justice and the pressure from below from locally organized community agitators, the focus isn’t necessarily on the crime, but on the “civil rights” of criminals. These leftists are spectacular at pivoting the discussion away from the war they wage on police and, in turn, local residents to a non-issue of what they deem “unconstitutional policing.”
What was written in 1966 accurately describes what is happening today. Mr. Welch further wrote, “We do not have room to illustrate further, but the fact is that the movement to discredit, demoralize, and supplant local police officers and local law enforcement bodies, by agents of the Federal Government, is continuing and increasing. In fact, the greatest enemy of local police forces throughout the country, and of the traditional American freedom and rights which they protect, is now the U. S. Department of Justice.”
Nearly 60 years later, federal agencies, like the DOJ and the Department of Homeland Security, have made deeper in-roads and entangling alliances with local police. And larger cities, especially those run by Democratic elected officials, take full advantage of any and all federal aid dangled in front of them, which slowly chips away at the independence and local accountability of the neighborhood police, resulting in the mess that we see today.
Don’t get fooled by any discussions about “police reform,” no matter who is saying it and what political party backs it. Police reform will only end in police being accountable to the dictates of the federal government, delivered as tyranny to local communities.
When there are actual problems that stem from the police, local accountability kicks in through local government, including the mayor, the village/city council, the village/city attorney, Internal Affairs, the county sheriff, and ultimately, the voters. With a federal or national police force, there would be no recourse.
The alternative to local police is either anarchy or tyranny. A hallmark of a free society is one that keeps its government in check and keeps its police local and independent. This is why The John Birch Society has run its Support Your Local Police and Keep Them Independent project since July 1963. There are forces organized against your freedom, and JBS members all across this country are organized to stop them and to protect your God-given rights, freedom, and independence.
Learn more about our action project and about opportunities in your area to get involved.
I’m Bill Hahn for The John Birch Society, and until next time, learn more, take action, and get involved, patriots!
