Just as Americans learned how deeply that diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) ideology had poisoned the Secret Service when they witnessed two assassination attempts against Donald Trump, they’re now learning that DEI ideology has done likewise at the FBI and the New Orleans Police Department.
From all appearances, the investigation began as a DEI clown show. The assistant special agent in charge of the FBI office in New Orleans, the nose-pierced Alethea Duncan, stood before reporters to claim that Shamsud-Din Jabbar did not perpetrate a terror attack when he plowed into New Year’s revelers on Bourbon Street in the city’s French Quarter.
She was duly contradicted minutes later.
Six months ago, the FBI was promoting its DEI hiring policies and thanking fans of Taylor Swift on X.
Then 65-year-old police chief Anne Kirkpatrick, fired from the same job in Oakland in 2020, took the microphone to say she would be “fearless” in doing her job.
Contradictions
Forty-two-year-old Jabbar crashed into pedestrians on Bourbon Street before being killed in a gun battle with police.
With a nose ring that contravenes FBI rules (which she later removed), Duncan stepped up to the microphone to announce that the FBI would take over the investigation. And Jabbar, she said, was no terrorist.
“This is not a terrorist event,” Duncan said. “What it is right now, is there improvised explosive devices that was found.”
Not so, said Mayor LaToya Cantrell. “The city of New Orleans was impacted by a terrorist attack.”
The FBI said likewise: The “event,” as Duncan called it, was indeed a terrorist attack.
FBI Should Have Known
Contrary to what Duncan said, the FBI knew it should expect exactly the sort of attack that left 14 dead.
“The Department of Homeland Security [DHS] warned law enforcement last month of the threat of violence from lone offenders around the holidays and the potential use of vehicle ramming, according to two internal memos obtained by CNN,” the network reported.
Joint bulletins “are shared among law enforcement when necessary, and generally ahead of the holiday season,” CNN continued:
In the bulletin obtained by CNN, the agencies warned that “lone offenders pose most likely threat of violence to soft targets in the Homeland during winter holidays,” referring to individuals acting alone.
“Lone offenders have historically used simple tactics, such as edged weapons, firearms, or vehicle ramming, due to their ease of access, ability to inflict mass casualties, and lack of required training,” the bulletin reads, listing other incidents in previous years. …
After the vehicle attack on a German Christmas market last month, DHS also distributed a “critical incident note” to law enforcement summarizing the incident and reiterating its warning that mass gatherings remain a potential target, and that vehicle ramming had been used in the US as a tactic before.
But perhaps the New Orleans office missed that note because its agents were focused on promoting DEI.
“Did you know some of the best #FBI Special Agents never realized they belonged in law enforcement?” the bureau’s office wrote on X in May:
The FBI is committed to hiring agents from a variety of unexpected backgrounds. Apply to attend our diversity recruiting event July 17th in Metairie, LA.
In June, the office focused on a DEI jobs fair:
#FBINewOrleans is holding a Diversity Agent Recruiting event and we want to meet you! Agents and FBI executives will provide first hand information about a rewarding career.
And in October, the office offered this:
#FBINewOrleans thanks all our new friends/Swifties who provided a little extra gear to our folks this weekend! Everything goes with camo.
Swifties are the mesmerized fans of Taylor Swift.
One can only wonder what the worthies of the New Orleans FBI office were doing when DHS published its joint bulletin.
The DEI shenanigans in New Orleans are similar to those at the U.S. Secret Service while Kim Cheatle was its director.
A key priority for Cheatle was pushing women into positions for which they were unqualified. One result of that effort was an agent’s abandoning her post to nurse her baby during a Trump campaign event.
“Fearless” Police Chief
Chief Kirkpatrick’s statement on January 1 was embarrassing.
“This is not just an act of terrorism. This is evil. And when we face evil we have a choice,” the elderly woman said. “We can run in fear, or we can indeed stand in strength.”
Kirkpatrick said that the city had been “tried by fire before, but fire purifies, fire makes things stronger.”
After praising the cops who brought down Jabbar, she vowed to stay strong:
I promise you, as the chief of police of this fantastic city, that I will be strong and firm and fearless.
Kirkpatrick’s “strength” became questionable in August when she hit two pedestrians while on duty and turning left at an intersection in the French Quarter.
“I had just gone to the hospital,” Kirkpatrick told a reporter:
I had an officer injured, and I live in the neighborhood here, and I was just making a left-hand turn down there when the event occurred,” she said.
Research shows that elderly drivers are more likely than younger drivers to hit pedestrians while turning left at intersections.
Oakland fired Kirkpatrick as police chief in 2020 without cause after she was accused of making false statements about her department’s cooperation with Immigration and Customs Enforcement during a raid.
Kirkpatrick walked off a much wealthier woman after she sued the city, which settled for $1.5 million.
The DEI-obsessed FBI thinks a lot of Kirkpatrick, too. Her biography at the police department’s website explains that she is a DEI teacher for the bureau:
Kirkpatrick is a National Instructor for the FBI’s Law Enforcement Executive Association’s Leadership Training Program, where she instructs on topics including, but not limited to, Bias and Diversity, Emotional Intelligence and Leading Generations.
