By Chief Joel F. Shults, Ed.D.
“Mommy, I’m scared,” says a child’s voice as an ominous figure lurks in the doorway. The text on the screen looms with the words “POLICE HAVE FEWER RESOURCES IN JOE BIDEN’S
AMERICA”. The video ad posted on Facebook by a group called America First Action now bears the infamous Facebook mask labeling the ad as false information. But could it be true?
Actually, Biden advocates returning to some of the ideals in his Clinton era crime bill that established the Office of Community Oriented Policing doling out billions to law enforcement agencies for additional officers, equipment and training. In a recent appearance with Atlanta, GA Mayor Kiesha Bottoms, Biden refuted claims that he agrees with defunding the police. “I don’t want to defund police,” Biden said. “I want to get police more money in order to deal with the things they badly need from making sure they have access to community policing, that they have also in the department’s social workers, psychologists, people who in fact can handle those god awful problems that a cop has to have four degrees to handle.”
In a June interview with late night host Trevor Noah, Biden responded to Noah’s question about defunding police to divert funds to social services by saying “changes can happen without defunding police completely”. When Noah glibly asserted that ” we know from interactions between the police and American people that (policing)… is an institution that is fundamentally rotten in the core”, Biden was quick to repudiate that claim saying “I don’t think it’s rotten in its core, I don’t think all cops are bad cops”.
Biden has been haunted and defensive about the 1994 Violent Crime Control and Law Enforcement Act which many observers cite in their claims of mass incarceration. Clinton has explicitly apologized for the bill which House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., House Majority Whip James Clyburn, D-S.C., Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, D, N.Y., and progressive icon Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt., voted to pass.
“The good news is we had the biggest drop in crime in history. The bad news is we had a lot people who were locked up, who were minor actors, for way too long.”, said Clinton in a schizophrenic statement sounding guilty for reducing violent crime.
But Biden is still sold on the community policing concept, saying that the 1994 measure was not fully funded or passed with all his recommendations.
Newly announced running mate Kamala Harris hasn’t been precisely on the same moderate page as Biden. She stated on Good Morning America that “We really do have to get to a point where we agree that the status quo way of thinking about achieving safety is really wrong when it assumes that the best way to achieve more safety is to put more police on the streets, it’s just wrong.” When asked about defunding police, Harris said “Get rid of police – of course not. Good policing is good for America” while applauding Los Angeles Mayor Eric Garcetti’s move to cute $150 million dollars from LAPD.
Harris has been criticized by those hoping for a more radical response to police reform. Her credentials as a former District Attorney and California’s attorney general have been a proud brand in her previous political campaigns. At the 2016 Democratic Convention, Harris boasted to a New York delegation “I now stand before you as the top cop of the biggest state in the country.”
In her 2009 book “Smart on Crime: A Career Prosecutor’s Plan to Make Us Safer”, she wrote, “If we take a show of hands of those who would like to see more police officers on the street, mine would shoot up. A more visible and strategic police presence is a deterrent to crime, and it has a positive impact on a community.” There she asserted that police officers are “a reassuring sign of a community’s commitment to order, calm and safety. More beat cops means more rapid response to assaults, traffic crimes and robberies has and has a profound effect on reducing quality-of-life crimes by simple presence.”
Ten years later her Senate testimony was “Part of what has been upside down in policing policy in America is that we have confused having safe communities with hiring more cops on the street, as though that is the way to achieve safe communities.”
The political reality is that regardless of the outcome in November, the changes in policing from the national level are not likely to be as radical as feared. But we only have to look at the unfriendly to police Obama years to be reminded that Biden was part of an administration that launched 23 investigations into police agency practices, sent White House representatives to the funeral of Michael Brown, and offered a non-apologetic beer and nuts meeting with the officer whom he accused of acting “stupidly” while investigating a report of a possible break-in. It’s no surprise that police organizations are endorsing the incumbent.