There is no better time to give up that dead end career wearing a paper hat and stuffing French fries in bags. Finally, criminals are going to be rewarded for making a worthwhile life choice. They won’t have to worry about the will of the people being heard in Washington and getting in the way of causing pain, property loss, suffering, and death. The will of the people doesn’t matter and for criminals, life is going to get a whole lot rosier.
No profiling? Rewarding criminals for what makes them different.
After hearing Eric Holder’s new anti-profiling announcement, America’s criminals should be wondering how anyone committing a crime could be captured by a federal officer unless they are caught red-handed:
… in making routine or spontaneous law enforcement decisions, officers may not use race, ethnicity, gender, national origin, religion, sexual orientation, or gender identity to any degree, unless listed characteristics apply to a suspect description.1
If Holder left anything out, it wasn’t something important. The thumbs down on profiling is perfectly in line with the administration’s habit of turning a blind eye to the realities of crime because prosecuting criminals often means taking legal action against lower income and minority offenders. Any good liberal will tell you the real problem is lack of money, not a criminal’s disregard for the law and society.
Holder is also talking about doing things smarter with his Smart on Crime initiative:
Our actions under this initiative are born of the crucial recognition that growing both tougher and smarter on crime means investing in innovations; striving for more just and more equal outcomes; and rejecting any policy or practice that has the potential to undermine sound law enforcement – or erode the sense of trust that must always exist between police officials and the citizens they serve.2
What does being smarter mean? It means coming up with an excuse to do less because it fills a political need, like throwing out broken windows policing after the Garner incident. Does this mean common criminals will get a pass in the interest of catching really bad criminals? It depends which criminals we want to reward. Serious accusations have already been raised about rewarding criminal aliens:
[Senator Charles] Grassley sent a letter to Department of Homeland Security Secretary Jeh Johnson expressing his concerns that despite a 2011 enforcement memorandum prioritizing the deportation of convicted criminals, the department released more than 36,000 of them back into U.S. communities during fiscal 2013, including 169 homicide convicts.3
Admitting immigrants commit crimes would run against everything Americans have been told, so perhaps it’s best to let some go and write it off to lack of funding. For the criminals who are supposed to live here, how many will be caught by eliminating profiling based on any and all observable characteristics and even characteristics that can’t be seen, like religious affiliation or national origin? Holder’s guidelines are for federal law enforcement, but local police will get the message fast. Only a fool would consider apprehending a suspect without footage of the crime on video. Arrests are going to be increasingly subject to profiling and civil rights charges. Even then, questions will be raised that can’t be answered about why suspects were targeted.
Republicans join criminals to scorn the will of the people
November’s Republican victory didn’t frighten our power mad president, who has proved time and again how he feels about the will of the people. Why should he care? The GOP is in the process of kicking the can down the road once again. Republicans have yet to successfully put a halt to anything Obama feels like doing.
What do people want from their government? How did we manage to end the year rewarding criminals and mocking the will of the people? One thing most of us want from all levels of government is to be protected from criminals. We don’t want our houses broken into. We don’t want to be robbed on the subway or on the way to dinner. Certainly, we don’t want to watch public officials rewarding criminals by making it easier to not be identified.
A December 8, 2014 White House press conference discussed profiling, Ferguson, the murder of American hostages, and the president’s dim view of enhanced interrogation.4 The words “crime” and “criminals” were never used, perhaps because the anti-profiling push is not about deterring crime. Stopping profiling is about rewarding criminals for what makes them potential civil rights cases.
As he boasted a budget that has trimmed a barely worth mentioning $176 billion in discretionary spending since 2010,5 John Boehner assured voters that the will of the people was being answered with his newest effort at compromise:
The bill contains a number of important measures to fulfill the people’s priorities, including protecting jobs, stopping wasteful spending, reining in government overreach, and funding our national security.6
Reining in government overreach? The growing anti-profiling campaign and interference with local law enforcement, combined with the Obama administration’s increasingly lax attitude towards illegal and even criminal aliens, argues just the opposite. Boehner can talk about the will of the people all he wants. He knows it doesn’t matter. He also knows it’s more fun to play games with Democrats than weather the bad press of doing the things that, sooner or later, will have to be done to save this country from government stupidity. Washington may be mocking the will of the people, but the people are a lot smarter than anyone calling the shots.
For a different take on the profiling argument, see: Politicians Should Stop Profiling Whites.
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