By Steve Pomper
Former President Barack Obama’s long-time efforts to crush traditional American law enforcement has had deleterious consequences for our society. Even Michelle Obama recently fired her own salvo against cops, expressing fears her daughters, while driving, might have negative encounters with police because they’re black.
She alluded to racist cops harassing—or worse—two of the most well-known children of two of the most famous people in the United States. Oh, we should mention it was a Secret Service agent who taught Malia Obama to drive. The truly sad part is the Obamas know the truth, but they’ve chosen a radical ideological narrative over the truth. This despicable contempt for traditional American law enforcement is disgusting.
Some believe Obama still has a hands on the levers of political power that is damaging the United States even beyond the criminal justice system. Considering how many Obama-era political servants are back, now ostensibly working for the Biden administration, this is evidence of Obama’s continued influence.
While Obama’s influence may affect political decisions at the federal level, it’s his collective influence over the past, present, and future of law enforcement at all governmental levels that has cops concerned.
Being one of the last conservative institutions in America, law enforcement officers breathed a, too-brief, collective sigh of relief when a more conservative presidential administration came to power in 2016. The onslaught against cops by leftist governments and their radical insurrectionist allies, during the previous eight years, was devastating to policing in America. The nation saw on display particularly in many formerly beautiful cities such as New York, Chicago, Portland, Minneapolis, and Seattle.
Policing is not supposed to be a political, and it isn’t when government functions constitutionally. Only people with nefarious intent, on either side of the aisle, can make law enforcement political, but currently it’s chiefly happening on the left.
Good government exists for a single purpose: to protect the individual rights and liberty of its people. Anything government does should further this goal. Defunding/abolishing the police does not preserve rights, so it is not good government. The Declaration of Independence stated this priority so eloquently:
“That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted….” Thus, the government’s primary responsibility is to protect the people’s God-given rights to “Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Happiness.”
Americans have been aware of Obama’s toxic view of American cops. But the charge sometimes seems amorphous and lacking specific details and information about funding and organization. Still, there are numerous anecdotes that prove the point: “The Cambridge Police Acted Stupidly,” at the John Lewis funeral, telling America that cops used “tear gas and batons against peaceful protesters,” and declaring, “If I had a son, he’d look like Trayvon.” Jack Cashill, at WND.com, asserted the latter incident as the moment Obama’s incantation breathed BLM’s Marxist organization onto existence.
The incident between black teen Trayvon Martin and adult George Zimmerman, the “white Hispanic,” resulted in a self-defense acquittal for Zimmerman. Despite the facts, BLM’s founders used this incident, bolstered by Obama’s “adopting” Trayvon, to cast all young black males as at risk for abuse by white (Hispanic) men/cops. Strangely, leftists performed ideological gymnastics by transforming Zimmerman, a Hispanic, into a surrogate for racist white police officers.
But those incidents are historical. They form the foundation upon which Obama has launched his assault on American law enforcement during and after his presidency. In the NPA’s newly released book, The Obama Gang: How Barack Obama, through his post-presidency foundation, assembled, launched, and wages the new assault on American Law Enforcement, written by yours truly, we track Obama’s well-organized assault on U.S. policing.
The most insidious anti-police creation of Obama’s post presidency Foundation is a game changing four-part pledge (oath of allegiance) or “Reimagining Policing Pledge.” This pledge acts as a sort of loyalty oath (kind of like the Mob’s Omerta). Over 300 jurisdictions across the U.S., including at least 10 of the largest cities, have signed Obama’s pledge. It’s not so much a pledge as it is a cudgel with which to batter America’s cops.
The pledge is divided into four segments:
- Review: use of force policies.
- Engage: gather public anecdotes of interactions with police.
- Report: announce findings within 90 days.
- Reform: reform use of force policies.
You may notice the presumption of police guilt and another element glaring in its absence. While the pledge includes speaking with the “public,” it doesn’t include speaking with the police. This pledge has led some mayors to some destructive policies. For example, the incident that put the pledge on the NPA’s radar, which happened in Upper Darby, Pennsylvania.
A tweet from the local police union remarked the mayor had just gotten rid of the SWAT team’s armored vehicle. She’d signed the pledge and cited the need to “modernize… an overmilitarized police department.” Ironically, the police department had just deployed the vehicle to rescue people during torrential rains and massive flooding from Tropical Storm Isaias. The police used it to save people’s lives. The next time, will those people die in the name of wokeness?
This presumption of guilt toward law enforcement has only taken hold because of an allied state media committed to political activism rather than enjoying its privileged constitutional position as the supposed watchdogs against political malfeasance.
The Obama Gang takes a deep dive into the pledge and its effect on the decline of law enforcement and the devastating consequences of increased crime on our society and culture.
The book also seeks to inspire cops to do what they can, smartly, to resist the social justice warriors’ onslaught. And it informs cop supporters of ways to help officers complete their missions (like voting anti-cop politicians who sign Obama’s pledge out of office).
Finally, the book is meant to assist those who just aren’t sure how they feel about policing to realize they have benefitted from having the best trained and best performing police in American history. A reality the anti-cop left is doing its best to snatch from the American people.