Remaking Local Police in the National Guard Model

Remaking Local Police in the National Guard Model

By Chief Joel F. Shults, Ed.D

If the George Floyd Justice in Policing Act of 2020 passes the United States Senate and is signed into law by the President, American law enforcement will slip from the hands of local voters. The creeping federalization of law enforcement by the dangling of grant money and threats of  investigation will reach the top of a roller coaster that will only go down with increasing speed.

The expansive act creates a host of new red-tape reporting requirements, multiple mechanisms to establish policy, procedure, and training for local law enforcement with minimal police professional input and expands the probability that investigations of complaints against police be all but turned over to federal puppet masters.

This exhaustive overhaul is reminiscent of the evolution from the vaunted citizen militias of Lexington and Concord at the start of the War of Independence to today’s National Guard. Federalizing war-fighting troops who have a dual mission to their states makes sense and works. Federalizing local law enforcement to dance to the tune of Washington D. C. bureaucrats doesn’t.

The list of committees, task forces, and commissions will be examining every pedestrian contact, every car stop, and every citizen complaint. Disregarding the current and evolving accountability practices already in use, the feds, of course, think they can do better. After all, they will be getting guidance from a host of recognized civic groups and factions. On occasion, they will even consent to add a law enforcement professional on an advisory board. Local civilian oversight will be compelled, with those boards having the legal authority to make policy for law enforcement agencies. Decisions like disarming school resource officers and forbidding foot or vehicle pursuits come from rule makers who have no understanding of how enforcing the law actually works.

Severe restrictions are military surplus protective gear and rescue equipment will occur to ensure that local police are not machine gunning citizens in the streets and plopping napalm from drones. There will be no more warrants that take armed criminals by surprise. Police will knock politely like pizza delivery persons to give gangs and terrorists a fighting chance against the police. Trying to avoid deadly force by using a carotid restraint is now going to be labeled deadly force. Another useful life-saving tool to be forbidden, along with multiple Taser jolts which will be labeled deadly force as well.

Officers who act in good faith, believing their decisions were reasonable at the time when laws and rules did not clearly cover the situation they faced from which they could not avoid, will be forced to undergo the rigors of career-ending, financially exhausting trials without the protections of the long-held validity of qualified immunity.

The Attorney Generals of the various states will be federalized in their access to federal U.S. District Courts since obviously, Congress distrusts any justice system but its own. Investigations of “pattern and practice” deficiencies in local policing will be vastly expanded. As more national standards, nationally imposed training, and national politicized cultural trends set themselves in cement, the failure of local law enforcement to toe the line of federal mandates will inevitably be defined as negligence. Once a federal investigation kicks in, local law enforcement once again becomes puppet master, with one group of bureaucrats appointed to oversee local bureaucrats under the threat of expensive lawsuits and loss of federal grants.

While some of the reforms under this act, which should more aptly be named The Elimination of State and Local Law Enforcement, are enforceable under statute such as the Civil Rights Act, many more are fueled by getting local policing addicted to federal funding. In order to comply with many of the new mandates, federal financial help will be needed. Once that help is taken, the addiction to grant money kicks in and no decision can be made without satisfying the federal sugar daddy.

Making sure that police don’t arrest any students on school grounds, or get notified of serious student misconduct is also buried in the language of the act. Apparently, no one is old enough to remember that the concern about post-Columbine school violence was met with more police in schools and mandatory reporting of school violence. No one remembers how quickly crime went down when the number of police officers was increased, sentencing became a bit stricter and more predictable, and offenders with firearms violations were prosecuted.

Making sure that our law enforcement is just and effective is an ongoing work of liberty-minded citizens. Taking that work away from the people and placing it in the hands of Washington D.C. politicos and bureaucrats is a drastic move in the wrong direction.