By Steve Pomper
The National Police Association (NPA) has been prescient in its monitoring, exposing, and responding effectively to progressive prosecutors who have been proliferating in recent years.
For example, the NPA took action, filing a bar complaint against the George Soros-funded Racheal Rollins, until recently, the Suffolk County, Mass. (Boston) DA, who ran for office promising not to enforce certain crimes. One item on the list really popular with the cops: Resisting Arrest.
Joe Biden recently rewarded Rollins’ leftist loyalty by promoting her to U.S. Attorney for the District of Massachusetts. Instead of just the Boston area, now she’s targeting police departments across the commonwealth.
The NPA’s motivation in monitoring these anti-police, non-prosecuting prosecutors is to, of course, look out for America’s communities, yes. But, specifically, to address anything that makes things more dangerous for cops than they already are. And making the job more dangerous is exactly what these prosecutors are doing to law enforcement officers.
Not only are these prosecutors not prosecuting criminals but also, they are prosecuting more cops. For example, in an excellent article by Cara Ding, at The Epoch Times (ET), she explains, radical leftist Cook County State’s Attorney “[Kim] Foxx’s office drastically increased the number of criminal charges against Chicago police in 2021….” As for non-prosecutions, there’s Jussie Smollett—need I say more?
The ET reported, “More Chicago officers [were] criminally charged [in 2021] than in [the] 4 years prior.” And, “Homicides reached an all-time high in Chicago… while… Foxx charged eight police officers with crimes….”
In the NPA’s 2021 book, The Obama Gang, several chapters expose scores of Soros-funded prosecutors and loyal Obama sycophantic politicians for their non-prosecutorial, soft-on-crime destruction of local and state criminal justice systems. Actually, being soft on crime would be an improvement. At least, they’d be addressing crime rather than ignoring so much of it.
Many of these prosecutors’ names are now well-known, and some of their actions have become infamous. Aside from Rollins and Foxx, there’s Baltimore’s Marilyn “give them space to destroy” Mosby, in St. Louis, Kim Gardner who ignored BLM and Antifa violence while criminally charging a couple who was guilty only of self-defense, and there’s Minnesota AG Keith Ellison, who told rape victims not to call the police if the rapist “ran away.”
And we cannot forget Philadelphia’s truly slimy, Larry Krasner, Los Angeles’ creepy George Gascón, or Hugo Chavez comrade Chesa Boudin in San Francisco. Gascón and Boudin are in the midst of recall efforts—for Gascón, it’s the second attempt.
And, most recently, our sanity has been assaulted by New York City’s Manhattan D.A. Alvin Bragg. Despite what FOX News called a “massive increase” in murders, 485 in 2021, he’s shown no inclination to tackle the crime surge effectively. In fact, he seems dedicated to increasing crime.
On January 3rd, 2022, Bragg released a memo from the D.A.’s office that reads less like the city’s top prosecutor’s plan to reduce crime and more like a radical leftist manifesto on how to increase crime. His policies include declining to seek jail sentences for certain offenders, and he seems much more concerned with the plight of the criminal than that of the victim.
Bragg shows no interest in law and order, instead, offering a mantra of “safety and fairness.” Fairness for whom? Certainly not crime victims or for NYPD’s police officers. The language he uses is saturated with restorative justice gibberish.
“Reduce pretrial incarceration” (release dangerous suspects back into the community). “Focus on Accountability, Not Sentence Length” (he asserts crime victims want other choices for their attackers than incarceration). And as previously mentioned, he said, “we will expand our use of restorative justice programming.”
Getting to the essence of his minimalist approach to crime-fighting, how does this, as reported by FOX News, sound? “If someone robs a convenience store with an empty gun, a Manhattan prosecutor must now charge the offender with Petit larceny (a Class A misdemeanor) instead of robbery in the first degree (a Class B felony).”
The cashier’s emotional trauma exists whether or not the gun was loaded. The victim believes the gun was loaded, and suspects could also use unloaded guns as cudgels to assault people. They even have a nice term for it, “pistol-whipped?” Also, it’s such a serious crime the cashier could legally shoot the robber—sorry, petty larcenist.
Although, with Bragg, he’d likely be more inclined to prosecute the robbery victim—again, sorry. I keep doing it. The petty larceny victim. Think about it. Would Bragg believe a victim is authorized to use lethal force against a “petty larceny” suspect? Is the victim supposed to know the gun was unloaded? This is not idle speculation with these defense attorneys, pretending to be prosecutors.
A FOX News headline captures the aloofness of New York City’s obtuse and self-unaware prosecutor. “Manhattan DA: ‘I don’t understand the pushback’ to lighter punishment for violent criminals.” If this weren’t so serious, I’d have laughed at what appears more like Babylon Bee satire.
Ding, in the ET piece, spoke with current and former major metro area prosecutors. She asks them to “explain decades of decline in quality prosecution work.” She mentions the trend began about a decade ago by exploiting “high-profile police-involved deaths…” to use as Trojan Horses to ride into political office. These prosecutors extricated the truth out of those police use-of-force incidents and then deployed them for political gain.
Recall, “hands up, don’t shoot” never happened (Obama AG Holder said so). Yet, leftist websites still display it prominently and activists continue dutifully to repeat the gesture and lie at demonstrations.
Ding notes these prosecutors’ “two-pronged” strategy: One, stop arresting and prosecuting so many criminals (to end “mass incarceration), and, two, go after the cops. Police officers, they’re not only allowed but encouraged to prosecute. Even when the officers have done nothing wrong.
One effective strategy, for which Krasner, Boudin, and Mosby were particularly noted, is to fire the “old” effective, experienced prosecutors and bring in the “new” radical leftist, inexperienced prosecutors. The ET reported, Mosby’s firings included “a 20-year veteran in the middle of an armed robbery trial against a violent repeat offender.”
Veteran Philadelphia prosecutor Shuaiyb Newton, who resigned shortly after Krasner took office, explained to the ET why he left. “Newton still remembered the first meeting Krasner had with prosecutors after assuming office. Krasner told them that his mission was to end mass incarceration, which didn’t sit well with Newton.”
“I don’t think a prosecutor’s purview is ending mass incarceration,” Newton began. “A prosecutor’s job is to hold people accountable for breaking the laws. We try to get a fair and just outcome for every case based on the individuals and the crimes they committed—be it to withdraw a prosecution, to offer leniency, or a harsh sentence.”
There’s the key: individuals, not groups. Prosecution of individual criminals in the name of the individual victims they preyed upon.
“Former prosecutors,” Ding reported, “say this deteriorates the quality of criminal prosecutions.” How could it not? But that seems exactly what these non-prosecutor’s want.
But this soft-on-crime agenda is beginning to result in a great backlash. Just look at the elections last November. Traditionally leftist cities rejected defunding the police, supported re-funding police departments, and one ultra-leftist, major city actually elected a Republican to serve as its city attorney.
We also can’t forget that Virginia voters elected Jason Miyares as their new attorney general. Virginians were fed up with the leftist prosecutor whom Miyares described as attempting to turn the AG’s office into a “progressive powerhouse.” So, the voters booted the progressive out of office in a red wave election that’s still sending aftershocks throughout the leftist-sphere.
Many believe the Virginia red wave election, last November, foreshadowed a red tsunami in 2022. Anything can happen, but that may be an accurate forecast. And that’s good news for American communities struggling with crime surges and hobbled by non-prosecuting prosecutors. It’s also very good news for the nation’s cops.