PRESIDENT TRUMP & THE NATION'S LAW ENFORCEMENT

A police vehicle...?

 

 

Trump has reversed Obama’s rule that kept sheriff and police departments from acquiring former military equipment.

  Are we getting the results of what the 2016 election was asking for?

 

We are starting to see the negative effects that the election of Donald Trump is having on the nation’s local police and sheriff’s departments.

 

One sheriff in Florida was so concerned that Trump might not be elected, he secluded himself in his house, hooked up his iPad to a projection screen that showed the electoral map.

 

 

When each state was called for Donald Trump, the sheriff shouted at each one with total relief.  By the end of the night, it had all sunk in: Voters not only elected Trump, they also had endorsed this sheriff’s brash, politically incorrect brand of conservative politics.

 

According to this sheriff:  “Trump doesn’t back down,” said the sheriff for the county that is home to Cape Canaveral and all those middle-class beach locations along Florida’s east coast. “Trump is not afraid to take a stance, and that is what we need right now.”  Really?

 

This sheriff now proudly displays Trump’s red “Make America Great” prominently in his office, and he is part of a wave of county sheriffs who feel emboldened by President Trump and his anti-immigration agenda.  These law enforcement officials have become highly vocal supporters in the nation’s political and culture wars.

From deep-blue Democratic states, such as Massachusetts and New York, to traditionally conservative strongholds in the South and the Midwest, locally elected sheriffs have become some of the president’s biggest defenders. It is pretty disgusting how they repeat Trump’s statements on issues such as immigration, to even the bogus political issue of NFL players kneeling  during the national anthem.  This is not being dis-loyal to the flag or the national anthem, it’s the player’s rights as stated in the first amendment.

 

But with Trump dominating the national conversation through his ridiculous tweets, many US sheriffs are repeating his blunt and pompous political style.  And that worries America’s progressives and those legal observers who fear Trump’s increasingly poorly managed US justice system, especially under the current Attorney General, Jeff Sessions.

 

Some sheriffs and local police have even gone to battle with Democratic officials, going against what the locals call their “politically correct” policies and they are using threatening rhetoric that puts many US residents seriously on edge.

 

“Members of law enforcement and sheriffs seem to be more comfortable articulating controversial, pro-incarceration views than in recent years,” said Daniel Medwed, a criminal justice professor at Northeastern University in Boston. “When you have a president who feels comfortable saying things that people would not have said in previous regimes, it emboldens other people to say those same things.”

 

Over the past nine months, various elected sheriffs have said that they would call Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) on undocumented residents.  They have also threatened to bar sex offenders from hurricane shelters, and have proposed sending inmates to help build Trump’s planned Mexican border wall.

 

A sheriff in Louisiana has said that his jail inmates should be ordered to cook the jails meals, wash all their dishes and to wash the sheriff’s patrol vehicles.  While all of this is currently against Louisiana law, this sheriff is calling for this “chain-gang” style work from his inmates and he also calls President Trump a “True, true friend”.

 

But what’s becoming very disturbing is that some of the nation’s sheriffs are also calling on their constituents to arm themselves as if they were a country-wide militia.  Other sheriffs have been producing controversial and jarring videos designed to show the sheriff’s toughness by showing  images of their deputies beating down doors.

 

In an interview with one Florida sheriff, he said he sees it as his duty to be supportive of the current president.  This sheriff’s  personal Facebook page even features a photograph of Trump along with the phrase “Leave Our President Alone.”   “The voice of the sheriffs is to help the president and help our Attorney General to be aware of what is taking place, the crisis and trends that are taking place, and to be able to put laws in place.”   This was said by a sheriff, who represents a county Trump won by nearly 20 points.

Trump has developed a strong relationship with the nation’s law enforcement officials. One week after his inauguration, he signed an executive order directing the Department of Homeland Security to deputize local officers to enforce federal immigration laws.  This of course, revives a policy that President Barack Obama had put aside.  In early February, Trump invited a dozen sheriffs to a White House meeting, during which he vowed to crack down on gang violence in Chicago and build his proposed border wall.  Of course, to date, nothing has changed in Chicago.

 

Before leaving the White House, these same sheriffs gave Trump a small statue of a cowboy-hat- wearing sheriff. It was the first time, they said, that the National Sheriffs Association had ever given that statue to a non-sheriff.  The following day, Trump addressed the Major County Sheriffs Association and Major Cities Chiefs Association.  “I would like to begin my remarks with a declaration to you, and delivered to every member of the law enforcement community across the United States, you have a true, true friend in the White House,” Trump said.

 

But legal analysts are surprised at the breadth and political clout of conservative sheriffs that appears to be growing stronger, reflecting the coarsening of this debate in the United States.

 

 

“The president is dividing this country, and it spills over into how some police officers are now doing their jobs,” said Isaiah Rumlin, chairman of the NAACP in Florida’s Duval County.

 

 

Within weeks of Trump’s inauguration, sheriffs across the country reported having productive meetings with Department of Homeland Security officials about ways they can work together to advance the president’s agenda, including on immigration.

With more than 3,000 sheriffs nationwide, almost all elected, this group is far from monolithic. Sheriffs in urban areas still tend to be Democrats, and many hold progressive views about sentencing reform, drug policy and immigration. One sheriff for example, was heartened when several sheriffs, spoke against Trump’s comment this summer that law enforcement should be rougher while transporting prisoners.

 

But the growing clout of conservative sheriffs can be traced to the fact there are just far more of them than those progressives, said Richard Rosenfeld, a criminology professor at the University of Missouri at St. Louis.  Even in politically moderate communities, some local sheriffs have become vocal advocates for Trump and his aggressive agenda.

 

In a suburban Jacksonville, Georgia, community, many immigrants fled from one town in Clay County, Ga., this year after that county’s newly elected Republican sheriff, Darryl Daniels, reversed policy and announced that his deputies would also work closely with ICE, this is all according to Indy Moran, a local social worker.

 

Daniels, the first African American sheriff in that county's history, has also been trying to burnish his law-and-order credentials by allowing his deputies to wear “hats, jeans and boots” on Fridays.

 

Wearing a cowboy hat, Daniels told Jacksonville’s local TV station, that the new look would strike fear in the criminals and pay “tribute to quieter times, when folks could recognize who the sheriff was.”

 

But “People are scared,” said Moran, who is Hispanic. “This is not Texas. There are a lot of farmers here, and if they want to wear that attire, that is fine. But if you are talking about agencies that provide law and order, I think it’s ridiculous and paints a clear picture of what they think and what they stand for.”

 

As expected, Daniels did not respond to repeated requests for comment.

 

But many lawmaker say the critics are overlooking the central message that came from the 2016 election.  “Be it the president or their sheriff,” they said, many Americans want strong leaders who “speak their mind.”

 

But is what we are getting today, really what the 2016 election was asking for?

 

Copyright G.Ater  2017