In America, our police historically have been independent of federal control and responsible to the communities they protect and serve. But if they are nationalized, they will be accountable to the federal government and their mission will be to enforce federal dictates.
“Our police are among the foremost guardians of freedom and thus a major target of the Communists. The better the force, the greater its efficiency, the higher its competence in preserving the peace, the more vital it is for the Communists to destroy it.” Those words — part of the Congressional Record and later published as a pamphlet entitled “A Communist Plot Against the Free World Police” — were spoken in a hearing before a subcommittee of the Senate Committee on the Judiciary on June 13, 1961.
They are as true today as they were then. In fact, events over the past almost 57 years — and in particular, over the last few years — show just how true they are. Police officers, sheriff’s deputies, and their departments all across America are finding themselves under increasing attack as the “War on Police” continues and escalates.
In the wake of Ferguson, police have become the target of one radical group after another, from the various and sundry groups under the Black Lives Matter (BLM) umbrella to Antifa and more. The message — no matter the group spouting it — is the same: Police are out of control, are racist, are in need of being reined in, and must be resisted (or outright attacked).
Already this year, 55 officers have died in the line of duty. That is an average of nearly three per week.
Besides the officers who make the ultimate sacrifice, there are countless numbers of these brave men and women who put on the uniform every day and make millions of smaller — but just as meaningful — sacrifices day after day. They work in departments that are understaffed, ill-equipped, and hamstrung by politically-correct policies that fail to take into account the real-world scenarios these officers face in their work-a-day world.
They face a public that is increasingly less supportive — if not actually antagonistic — of police. They face the very real threat of finding themselves in a situation where life and death decisions have to be made in fractions of a second. Making a mistake one way could wind them up in the morgue. Making a mistake the other way could make them both the subject of the next viral YouTube video and a criminal investigation.
Against that backdrop, they still suit up, clock in, and work “To Serve and Protect.” And once a year, America honors them with National Police Week. According to the official website:
In 1962, President John F. Kennedy signed a proclamation which designated May 15 as Peace Officers Memorial Day and the week in which that date falls as Police Week. Currently, tens of thousands of law enforcement officers from around the world converge on Washington, DC to participate in a number of planned events which honor those that have paid the ultimate sacrifice.
This year, National Police Week is May 13-19, and now that it has come to a close, perhaps it would be well to illuminate what is perhaps the greatest attack on police. While the myriad celebrations, memorials, and other events did address — at least to some degree — the threats mentioned above, and President Trump praised the brave men and women who wear the uniform and face those threats, what was ignored is that those threats are just the surface.
The real threat is what those threats are designed to accomplish, namely the nationalization of local police under the control of Washington. The tactics of the well-organized, well-funded (I’m looking at you George Soros), media-assisted “War on Police” are clever. First, nearly every officer-involved shooting of a black man is cast as evidence of police racism and violence — even (and almost especially) when the black man in question is a dangerous criminal in the act of committing a violent crime. This is done while completely ignoring the salient fact that black men take each other’s lives at a rate 40 times higher than all officer-involved deaths of black men. While it helps the narrative if the race card can be played, the liberal mainstream media still bend over backward to promote the narrative by pushing anti-police YouTube videos of police encounters into the viral category by giving them coverage disproportionate to their importance.
Then, once local police are sufficiently demonized, cast as corrupt, and accused of covering up their own crimes, the feds are called in to investigate — even when the appropriate state agencies are perfectly capable of doing so.
The end result is usually an ugly combination of escalated violence against police officers and calls for nationalizing local police. In fact, the move to nationalize local police is so subtle, so crafty, so invasive and pervasive, that is is happening behind the scenes with many departments assisting it, without perhaps even realizing it.
The New American reported last week:
Under a Department of Justice program known as “Equitable Sharing,” local police are being deputized as federal agents in order to participate in Joint Terrorism Task Forces, enabling them to bypass their state’s own forfeiture and surveillance laws so they can spy on individuals suspected of terrorism or other crimes falling under federal jurisdiction.
As that article points out, when participating in a Joint Terrorism Task Force, state and local police become an arm or extension of the federal government and DOJ; in essence, they become de facto national police.
This is just one of many ways (including federal grants and weapons programs) by which the federal government is slowly, but surely, taking over local police departments.
When this writer reached out to the Law Enforcement Charitable Foundation (LECF) — an organization dedicated to supporting local police and keeping them independent, LECF President James F. Fitzgerald said this trend is nothing new. He pointed to the document quoted at the beginning of this article, “A Communist Plot Against the Free World Police” as a prime example. He said, “That report makes it clear that the Communists in the United States [in the 1960’s] were doing all they could to undermine local police — to destroy the very concept of local police.” He went on to say that today is no different.
That congressional report makes that case very well, saying:
Many of us know what is back of the mob violence we have been considering. It is probable, however, that few of the demonstrators realize that they are victims of a war that is being waged in the free world today. It is a life-and-death struggle between communism, which makes the people slaves of the state, and free world democracy, in which the state carries out the will of the people.
While this writer objects to the use of the word “democracy” to describe the United States (which is actually a republic), the point is clear: In a free nation, the government answers to the people; in a totalitarian government the people answer to the government. One of them has local police; the other has national police.
Furthermore, while not the main point of the report, it is clear that local police are the bane of totalitarian groups, such as (but certainly not limited to) Communists. Immediately after the above, the report states:
Our police are among the foremost guardians of freedom and thus a major target of the Communists. The better the force, the greater its efficiency, the higher its competence in preserving the peace, the more vital it is for the Communists to destroy it.
Note that it is local police, not national police, who are the “guardians of freedom” in the cities, towns, counties, and neighborhoods where they live and work, raise their children, go to church, and have friends and family. Therefore, it is local police who are the targets of those who fund, organize, and train the social justice warriors who create (and incessantly repeat) the false narrative that Washington needs to step in and solve a plethora of “problems” that don’t exist outside the darkened imaginations of the conspirators demanding the solutions.
By creating the social unrest, and offering the nationalization of police as the solution, these enemies of America are guilty of what French economist and statesman Frédéric Bastiat called “concocting the antidote and the poison in the same laboratory.”
America is free — at least in part — because we have local police who help guarantee that freedom has a place to thrive. Coming out of the celebration of National Police Week, all Americans need to work to support your local police and keep them independent.
Photo: RyanJLane/E+/Getty Images
