Opinion

In Fomenting Mistrust, The Washington Post And The ACLU Reign Supreme

REUTERS/Jonathan Ernst

Ron Hosko President, Law Enforcement Legal Defense Fund
Font Size:

In its relentless attacks on the political right, the unholy alliance between The Washington Post and American Civil Liberties Union works ‘round the clock to create division, raise doubt, and challenge that which is intended to keep our country secure, our citizens safe.  Among their top targets are, unsurprisingly, Republicans and the police.

The Post managed to snipe both targets with a misguided front page piece on Monday, this time calling out “Republican governors (who) stir tension on policing.”

The crux of the fake news story was outrage at Missouri’s governor for sending state police patrols to St. Louis.  And – spoiler alert – the ACLU’s Missouri executive director is singing in the Post’s choir: “unless we start talking about that, there’s a concern we are going to get more of the same,” he said.

“That” is the belief of activists who fear the Republican governor’s plan might lead to more racial profiling.  According to the Post, African-American drivers are 75 percent more likely to be stopped by police than whites.  The supposition is that all the Republican governor will accomplish by dispatching state police to patrol crime-ridden St. Louis roads is generating more race-based traffic stops and collecting resulting income and disproportionate arrests.

The Post quotes a democratic state representative who claims to have heard the governor exhorting the troopers being assigned to the detail with, “Let’s go get them.” and wonders exactly who ‘them’ is.  The Post, ACLU, and democratic rep’s goal is almost achieved – creating doubt about the true motives of the governor’s plan.  But, what they ignore is what betrays them.

Violent crime in St. Louis has, like many others cities across the country, shot upward since the fatal shooting of Ferguson cop attacker Michael Brown three years ago.  Grudgingly, the Post acknowledges that 2017 is on track to be the city’s deadliest year in two decades.  That reality is, to the Post and ACLU, beside the point, as it would be in Democrat-run Baltimore and Chicago (both Maryland and Illinois have Republican governors), which happen to be two more cities which have shot toward 1990s-style homicide counts while their mayors plead for federal law enforcement help.

Instead of concerning themselves with maximum application of state or federal resources that might abate the carnage in these cities, the twin pillars of broken liberal thought trot out their usual themes – biased policing, mass incarceration, unaccountable Republican politicians – while ignoring the suffering of economically depressed black communities where the violence is greatest.

Disproportionate policing and incarceration typically follow disproportionate criminality.  That is the case in our major cities, especially St. Louis, Baltimore and Chicago.

Take a look at the numbers: St. Louis is approximately 47 percent black and 47 percent white. But homicide suspects and victims are disproportionately black (100% and 92% respectively in 2017.

Once great Baltimore, which has shed about one third of its population since 1950, became the epicenter of anti-police strife when career criminal Freddie Gray died after being transported in a police wagon.  Since parts of the city burned in 2015, and disgraced prosecutor Marilyn Mosby tried and failed to convict six wrongly accused officers, violent crime there skyrocketed.  The mayor, a Democrat, continues to look for rays of light in the city’s future but is besieged by bad news as those who can, flee the city, much like Chicago’s fate.

Like St. Louis, Baltimore’s homicide victims are overwhelmingly black.  The Baltimore Sun’s data map for 2016 reports there were 291 homicides of black victims and 17 of whites.  In an environment where the victims and offenders are almost exclusively black, there should be little doubt that police will disproportionately engage, arrest and charge blacks.  That doesn’t equate to the “bias” claims served up by the Post and ACLU.

Finally, there’s ‘sweet home Chicago,’ where Democrat Rahm Emanuel does daily battle with the feds regarding his sanctuary city policies while the weekly body count harkens to Iraq in the throes of the insurgency.  The city’s population is roughly equally divided between white, Hispanic and black yet the lion’s share of both murderers and their victims is black.

As his political career swirls around the drain, Rahm might consider a second career with the Post or ACLU.  He’s proving to be an expert at diverting attention from the grim reality of generations of Democrat failures while shouting “racism” at those trying to help fix his mess.