This is a weird and troubling election, and it's been a weird and troubling several years for public/police relations. Problems with minorities, problems around civil forfeiture, problems with military equipment, problems with shootings and a sense that the cops are more interested sometimes protecting their own than the general public.
That makes this whole-hearted endorsement of Donald Trump by the Fraternal Order of Police all the more problematic. It really seems to come across as clarifying exactly where the police stand: with someone who will protect them from accountability, who will rein in the Justice Department, who will restart shipping military surplus weapons to local law enforcement, who will make it clear where the poor and minorities (and journalists) stand in this country.
It's not the move of an organization that wants to reestablish ties that may be frayed or broken. It's the move of an organization that's willing to side with a guy whose own adherence to the law has been sketchy, whose espoused approach to any problem is bluster and bombast, and who's also supported by a variety of zany groups and racists and xenophobes and sexists. And these are who the FOP and its members have chosen to stand by.
Originally shared by +Yonatan Zunger:
The national Fraternal Order of Police has endorsed Trump. I did not think I could become any more disappointed with American police, but they have found another way.
It is clear that they see Trump as deeply representative of their priorities and likely to stand behind them no matter what. Unfortunately, this makes clear what their priorities are. Police unions have decided that their first and foremost principle is to protect individual officers from any form of accountability, up to and including for rape and murder; they apparently have also decided to include white supremacy in their formal charter.
If you combine this with other police union statements in the past few days – like the Miami union's saying that they will not provide police protection to the Dolphins football team until and unless the team forces its members to stand during the anthem – it has become painfully clear that police unions across the country have converged on a belief that any opposition to them, any suggestion that their power should be less than unlimited, is "anti-cop."
I have always been suspicious of the notion of public sector unions, but police unions have gone so far beyond any prospective worst case of how such a union could behave that their very existence has become unconscionable. The armed forces of a state must always be subordinate to civilian oversight – and a police union which can demand exemption from this, and threaten violence or public disorder (as Miami's just did, and as many others have) if it is not granted, is an enemy of democracy itself.
Robert Heinlein is writing this.
+Travis Bird I don't follow you.
The first block of the Freikorp is in place.
+Dave Hill This reminds me of the events he referred to as 'the Crazy Years'. There are also aspects of recent years which resemble parts of Stranger in a Strange Land.
The timing seems weird for sure because it's not as if Hilary had made a bunch of speeches calling out police. Can you really trust anything Trump says at this point? Not sure why anyone is jumping to back him.
+Jon Weber The presumption (which, as you note, may not be a justified one) is that Clinton will carry on the supposedly police-hostile attitudes of the Obama Administration.
But I think it's more that Trump is seen by these folk as a positive good: he promotes law and order, handwaves aside civil rights and traditions and regulations and restrictions, has promised to restart shipments of military surplus to PDs, denegrates minorities, talks up security threats, and talks big and blustery and self-importantly. Some of all of those are attractive, it seems, to folk in our law enforcement community.
+Dave Hill I think 'denegrating' is what some cops aspire to. (Nice neologism.)
This is partially Clinton's fault, according to information in a Washington Post article.
"Trump responded to a 12-page questionnaire from the FOP and then met with its leaders last month in Trump Tower, the union’s executive director, Jim Pasco, said Friday. Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton did not respond to the questionnaire until weeks after the early August deadline had passed, Pasco said, which did not give the FOP time to distribute her answers to state lodges across the state, and the union did not meet with her.
"The FOP did not endorse a presidential candidate in 2012, and has not endorsed a Democratic candidate since Bill Clinton in 1996, Pasco said."
Perhaps Clinton had written the FOP off and intentionally chose not to respond, but it seems odd that the Clinton organization failed to turn in a questionnaire. If the FOP felt insulted, I can understand why.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/true-crime/wp/2016/09/16/fraternal-order-of-police-union-endorses-trump/
+John E. Bredehoft If so, that's an unexpected gaffe by the Clinton campaign.
But even if so, it's still an awful move by the FOP, for a variety of reasons.
Looking at the actual response to the FOP from the Trump campaign (included in the WaPo article above), I'm struck by how … well, generic and non-responsive it is.The majority of answers are essentially either "it's inappropriate for the President to get involved in state or local affairs," "the FOP will always have a place at the table in discussions of these sorts," or "I'll sign legislation that's in the best interest of America or Americans." There's no sense of any knowledge about or real opinion on the issues the FOP raises, or desire to lead from even a "bully pulpit" standpoint.
The exceptions are a few strong statements at the end about cracking down on illegal immigration, opposition to any gun control, and being in favor of military surplus grants to state and local law enforcement.
If that's the threshold to get the endorsement of the FOP, it's a pretty low bar.