Highlights
If you believe in a platform that is anti-police, anti-prison and dismissive of the safety concerns of most Americans, you’re going to lose the election.
Author
Leonard Adam Sipes, Jr.
Retired federal senior spokesperson. Thirty-five years of award-winning public relations for national and state criminal justice agencies. Interviewed multiple times by every national news outlet. Former Senior Specialist for Crime Prevention for the Department of Justice’s clearinghouse. Former Director of Information Services, National Crime Prevention Council. Former Adjunct Associate Professor of criminology and public affairs-University of Maryland, University College. Former advisor to presidential and gubernatorial campaigns. Former advisor to the “McGruff-Take a Bite Out of Crime” national media campaign. Certificate of Advanced Study-Johns Hopkins University. Aspiring drummer.
Article
I’m a lifelong Democrat. So was my father. So was his.
I voted for Barak Obama twice. I was a principal crime advisor to a Democrat running for governor. I was fired when Republicans took control of the state. I worked directly for African American Democratic appointees for close to thirty years.
But I believe that the Democrats running against Donald Trump will hand him the election on a silver platter over crime and justice issues.
To put it simply, personal safety is a benchmark most use when picking a candidate. Anything that disrupts anyone’s sense of well being as to personal, family and community safety will cause that person to reconsider a candidate.
At War With Justice
There are endless articles (some deserved) regarding alleged police misconduct and other negative aspects of the criminal justice system.
If you read what I read, you get daily reinforcement that cops are screwing up right and left and that there are way too many people within our justice system and prisons. Liberal prosecutors are gaining steam proclaiming that they will stop enforcing a wide array of laws ranging from drug possession and sales, trespassing and disturbing the peace.
The comments from leading Democrats state that they will end over-incarceration (Sanders) and tame racist cops (Buttigieg). Joe Biden is being slammed for his past support of incarceration, which he now wrongfully denies.
Examples
Mayor Pete: Put on the firing line during Thursday’s presidential debates because of the police shooting in his city, South Bend, In., Mayor Pete Buttigieg admitted that efforts to make cops more accountable and avoid bias had failed. ‘I couldn’t get it done,’ he conceded, ensuring the issue of what he called “systemic police racism” will continue to have salience during the 2020 campaign, The Crime Report.
Kamala Harris: A close examination of Harris’s record shows it’s filled with contradictions. She pushed for programs that helped people find jobs instead of putting them in prison, but also fought to keep people in prison even after they were proved innocent. She refused to pursue the death penalty against a man who killed a police officer, but also defended California’s death penalty system in court. She implemented training programs to address police officers’ racial biases, but also resisted calls to get her office to investigate certain police shootings, Vox.
Joe Biden: In a campaign speech in South Carolina on Saturday, former Vice President Joe Biden defended the 1994 anti-crime law he played a primary role in writing.
But he claimed that his record on the Violent Crime Control and Law Enforcement Act had been “grossly misrepresented.” He distanced himself from some of the key provisions of the law, including its billions in funding for states to build prisons.
“I didn’t support more money to build state prisons. I was against it. We should be building rehab centers and not prisons,” he said Saturday.
He was misrepresenting his own record, CNN.
The Most Progressive
Former Vice President Joe Biden plans to release a criminal justice reform plan “in the coming weeks,” reported CNN.
Biden’s plan will focus on a number of key areas, including overcriminalization, lowering recidivism and crafting sentencing guidelines that provide alternatives to prison, said CNN.
According to CNN sources, a Biden campaign adviser described the plan as research-based and predicted it would be “among the most progressive of all the 2020 candidates.”
Turning Left
That Democratic firefight and others have inflamed liberals looking ahead to 2020, including the group that was behind now-Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez’s upset win last year. The raw emotions have many in the party wary of an all-out battle for the party’s soul in primaries from the presidential race all the way down to the congressional level, Politico.
There are a multitude of articles suggesting that the democrats keep picking losing issues, CNN.
Is It All Smoke and Mirrors?
Let’s start with cops, those downtrodden enforcers who have been endlessly in the news. They are easy prey, right? Endless articles from major news sources have attacked cops as racist, brutal thugs who discriminate endlessly against minorities and working-class people.
Except for the fact that most Americans, including most blacks and Hispanics, see police officers as “fair.”
Gallup
A new study by the Center for Advancing Opportunity (CAO) and Gallup finds that residents in America’s fragile communities — defined as areas with concentrated poverty and limited access to educational and economic opportunities, have mixed but overall favorable views of law enforcement.
Law Enforcement: The study finds that 74% of fragile-community residents vs. 87% of Americans overall think people like themselves are treated “very fairly” or “fairly” by their local police. The results vary by racial group: Black (65%) and Hispanic (72%) residents of fragile communities are considerably less likely than white residents (87%) to say people like themselves are treated fairly by police, Gallup. Regardless of race and ethnic background, most residents of fragile communities see police as acting fairly.
Public Confidence in Law Enforcement is High
The data states that policing is one of the most respected professions in the US and the world, and research documents that the overwhelming number of people stopped by law enforcement felt that they acted responsibly, Confidence in Police.
Eighty-five percent of Americans either have a great deal or some confidence in law enforcement. The media and Congress are at the bottom of the ratings.
An estimated 40 million U.S. residents age 16 or older, or about 17 percent of the population, had a face-to-face contact with a police officer in one year. Among people who had face-to-face contacts, about nine out of 10 residents felt the police were respectful or acted properly, Bureau of Justice Statistics.
Having said this, it’s inevitable that out of 40 million yearly encounters, some will go bad. It’s a statistical reality.
Per the Bureau of Justice Statistics study, police used or threatened to use force in less than two percent of contacts.
Best In The World?
Gallup’s 2018 Global Law and Order report state that US and Canadian police are the world’s most trusted law enforcement officers based on a measure of confidence.
The report offers an observation repeated on this site and by a number of criminologists; crime affects everything from schools to jobs to people’s willingness to invest in a community. High crime communities are simply detrimental to the prosperity of residents.
More than two in three adults worldwide (69%) said in 2017 that they have confidence in their local police. The results vary significantly by region, however, from a low of 42% in Latin America and the Caribbean to nearly double that in the U.S. and Canada (82%), Gallup.
Crime And Fear
Just in case you haven’t noticed, cities throughout the country are experiencing real problems with violence. While most of the national indexes indicate a mixed bag of results as to rising crime, the number of persons who had been victims of violent crime is up 17 percent from 2015, Crime in America.
Per Gallup, 75 percent of Americans worry about crime and violence which is down from 78 percent this time last year, which was the same as health care, the top concern, Fear of Crime.
Gallup asked those polled if they worried about topics a great deal or a fair amount. The top concern was health care at 80 percent which was tied by federal spending followed by hunger at 79 percent and crime at 75 percent.
Half of Americans Believe Crime is Very or Extremely Serious
Just under half (49%) of Americans believe the problem of crime in the United States is very or extremely serious, Serious Crime Concerns.
More Fear of Crime Data
56 percent of Americans believe that crime needs to be reduced-Pew.
68 percent of Americans believe that crime is increasing-Gallup.
Two-thirds of gun owners say protection from crime is a major reason they own a gun-Pew, Fear of Crime.
Crime is the number one topic (beyond weather) requested by news consumers, Crime News.
Incarceration
When did holding violent people accountable become an issue? Does the #metoo movement exist? It there now a consensus that dangerous people should be left in the community?
In the many cities where violence is a problem, police chiefs, mayors and council people of all colors condemn the leniency of the justice system and blame ongoing violence on violent criminals who should have been incarcerated for previous crimes.
There is a national group who wants to cut the prison population by 50 percent. If you go to their website, you will see the cream of the crop in left-leaning liberal and Democrat organizations, Cut 50. Apparently, Joe Biden is joining them, BuzzFeed.
We are endlessly told that the United States leads the world in incarceration.
The problem is that the majority of convicted felons don’t go to prison and the overwhelming majority received a plea bargain resulting in a lesser sentence. The average violent offender serves less than three years in prison, all per US Department of Justice research.
Fifty-five percent are in prison for a violent crime and most of the rest either have a history of violence or multi-repeat arrests and incarcerations.
That and the fact that the great majority of released inmates are rearrested (for new crimes, not technical violations), and most are returned to prison.
Incarceration, for all its ills, may keep the dangerous people away from you, your family and community.
There has been a dramatic effort on the part of many Democrats (and some Republicans) to cut the prison population over the last thirty years or more. It’s mostly failed with a ten percent reduction and most of that has come from a twenty-year decline in overall crime, Incarceration.
Thirty years of demands for less incarceration from the great majority of policy and criminological commentators have moved the needle only slightly, if at all. Why?
Conclusion
Most Americans, regardless as to who they are, support their law enforcers, fear crime and are not overwhelmingly anxious to get rid of prison beds.
Wonder why?
African Americans poll differently than others on many criminal justice topics but that doesn’t make them liberal as to crime. There are a variety of studies suggesting that blacks are very concerned with crime and violence and may be as conservative as others, The Atlantic. Even today, black members of Congress stand by their vote to dramatically increase prison construction, Texas Tribune. African American mayors routinely blame a justice system that lets violent offenders stay in the community.
Gun ownership keeps growing. Home security devices are exploding. Cop shows on television are endless. And all of this is an indication that we are getting safer?
If you want to lose an election, propose a fifty percent cut in the prison population, or consistently call cops racist, or deny that you were a one time champion as to building more prisons.
No one supports bad cops or policies. Not every felon needs to be in prison or be there for so long. Marijuana should be legalized not because it’s harmless, but because most Americans believe its time. Criminal justice reform is a great starting point for discussing where we should go as to crime and punishment. Communities should have a greater say as to law enforcement tactics.
Yes, bad cops exist and prejudice does play a part as to discriminatory criminal justice policies.
But if you really believe that a platform that is anti-cop, anti-prison and dismissive of the concerns of most Americans as to their safety is the right way to go, you’re delusional.
“Progressives” will have a heart attack reading this suggesting that I am completely out of touch with the reality of working-class concerns.
But if the Democrats on the campaign trail continue down this path, they will hand the election to Donald Trump supported by sufficient numbers of African Americans and Hispanics who are sick of crime.
The numbers simply don’t lie.
Contact
Contact us at leonardsipes@gmail.com.
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