By Steve Pomper
Is there anything more dangerous to our culture than elected officials trading equal justice for social justice, exchanging the rule of law for the rule of man, and swapping law and order for chaos? The quick answer is, no. But it goes even deeper.
In America today, city, county, and state officials, obliged to use the police to protect the people from violent radicals, are instead protecting those violent radicals and using them to attack the police.
Cities like New York, Baltimore, St. Louis, Minneapolis, Los Angeles, Chicago, San Francisco, Portland, and Seattle have radical mayors, city councils, and prosecutors. While it’s shameful that city politicians betray their voters and police officers, we’re even seeing this abhorrent behavior from too many police chiefs.
In fact, according to LawOfficer.com, the San Francisco Police Officers Association (SFPOA) recently called out Police Chief Bill Scott for refusing “to publicly ‘stand up for his officers.’” After days of reportedly peaceful protests, demonstrators transformed into rioters and attacked the cops. They threw bottles at officers, attacked them in their patrol cars, and shot spray paint into officers’ faces. These crimes are felonies, folks.
Chesa Boudin, a former public defender and current Marxist, is San Francisco’s new district attorney. As I’ve written previously for NPA, “Monica Showalter of the American Thinker called Boudin, ‘Cuba-groomed from the start’ and a ‘trusted propagandist, translator and advisor…’ for—wait for it… the late Venezuelan president and tyrant Hugo Chavez.”
In a letter expressing their disappointment in Chief Scott not backing his cops, the SFPOA wrote about Boudin, “We know that there is little likelihood that the former public defender [Boudin] will actually hold anyone accountable for the violent assault, but that should not absolve Chief Scott from doing his job to identify the culprits and arrest them and from also showing some support for our officers and our department.”
For these folks, law enforcement officers are so abusive they cannot be victims. There are also other district attorneys, city attorneys, and prosecutors across the nation, many of whom obtained their offices with financial help from a wealthy Bond villain, social justice activist.
It would be bad enough if these prosecutors had campaigned on law and order and then followed a different course. But, shamefully for voters, as was the case with Rachael Rollins in Suffolk County, Mass. [Boston], they elected her despite campaigning on 15 laws she would not enforce.
Larry Krasner, the district attorney in Philadelphia, has created a razor wire relationship with local law enforcement. Seattle’s feckless city attorney, Pete Holmes, has refused to prosecute any rioters for misdemeanors.
And, a few days ago, a headline popped up on my phone: “King County prosecutor not filing charges from arrests made during clearance of CHOP.” There are reports that political chameleon Dan Satterberg, responsible for prosecuting felonies, including in Seattle, says he will not prosecute the nearly two dozen CHOP residents Seattle police arrested while clearing the so called, “autonomous zone.”
Satterberg made this determination so quickly, it doesn’t seem likely he had time to go through each case in detail. And, judging by videos of the event online, at least some suspects had to have been charged with resisting arrest.
Many of these prosecutors argue this is prosecutorial discretion. That is a lie. District attorneys use prosecutorial discretion, yes, but that’s after examining a particular case and deciding there is not enough evidence to convict. However, in the current cases, prosecutors are refusing to prosecute on a wholesale basis, based on their ideological view of the law or the violator.
Remember, your average citizens, in states with the most restrictive CCP virus orders, are under threat of arrest for a misdemeanor which could result in jail time and a large fine. At the same time, district attorneys are refusing to prosecute rioters who have committed property damage, assault, arson and worse. This is what social justice replacing equal justice looks like.
Cites are more likely to enforce laws requiring home and business owners to repair property damage than they are to enforce laws preventing people from committing property damage, such as graffiti.
So, it comes down to organizations like the NPA to attempt to assist police agencies in holding their city and state prosecutors accountable when they refuse to support and defend public safety laws. Essentially, to hold them to the oaths they took swearing to enforce the law.
Where prosecutors abdicate their responsibility to uphold laws, groups such as the NPA are doing things such as filing amicus briefs (or amicus curiae, “friend of the court”) that provide support for enforcing laws that district attorneys like Boudin, Krasner, and Satterberg refuse to enforce. The organization initiating the “friend of the court” brief is not a party to the case.
Sadly, adding to the problem, some judges refuse to allow these briefs into the court hearings. This shows just how important it is to elect prosecutors who will prosecute criminals and independent judges who will rule objectively on such motions.
Jurisdictions are failing to present or defend the proper legal authority for charging defendants with crimes. In other words, they seem to be placing a thumb on the scales of justice. When prosecutors attempt to “prosecute” with one eye closed and one hand tied behind their backs, justice is not served. That’s where independent organizations that support law enforcement become important to help defend law and order.