The Entirely Foreseeable Consequence of the War on Police

Maxine Bernstein reports for the Oregonian:

Officers who serve on the Portland Police Bureau’s specialized crowd control unit, known as the Rapid Response Team, voted to resign from the team during a meeting Wednesday night.

The unprecedented move by about 50 officers, detectives and sergeants to disband their own team came a day after a team member, Officer Corey Budworth, was indicted, accused of fourth-degree assault stemming from a baton strike against a protester last summer.

The team commander submitted this memorandum to the chief explaining the reasons for the mass resignation. The reasons will not come as any surprise to those who have been paying attention. This is dangerous work. Yet those who are putting their lives on the line for the rest of us are getting the backing and support they should be getting from local leaders.

The team works under directives from the bureau, but those directives are reinterpreted ex post facto. As a result, team “members [who] acted within the training, directive, and policy … were later disciplined based on [later] Directive and policy changes ….”

Changing the rules to make a person’s previously legal act illegal after he does it is so grossly unfair that we have a constitutional prohibition against it in criminal law. But “woke” political leaders think its perfectly okay to damage the careers of police officers in this way.

The team has no confidence in the leadership “from the Chief’s Office, City Hall, local political leaders, and the District Attorney’s Office.” Nor should they.

The memo calls out the DA specifically. “The lack of leadership from the District Attorney’s Office pertains to the charging decisions and the lack of prosecution of individuals arrested for committing crimes during civil unrest including violent acts committed against the officers themselves.” (Emphasis added.) Other than lack of evidence or a credible claim of self-defense, there is no excuse for not prosecuting a rioter who attacks the police trying to keep order. But that does not appear to be the reason in most cases. The memo notes “statements from the District Attorney interpreted by demonstrators to mean they would not be charged for criminal acts they commit during demonstrations.”

Being a police officer has always been a dangerous job. We at CJLF do not doubt that some changes are needed to more effectively weed out the few bad apples. But what we have seen in 2020 and this year is an unrelenting attack on all police. We see attacks on the basic legal protections they need to do their jobs effectively. We see calls to defund them. We see “woke” prosecutors refusing to prosecute those that the police properly arrest and even those who physically attack the police.

I have been warning for some time that the inevitable consequence of these attacks is that fewer good people will want to become or remain police officers. And what then?

Who will you call when the home invasion robber is kicking in your door at 3 am? If not the police, who will respond at that hour? Who will run toward the gunfire instead of away from it? Who will risk their own lives to save yours?  The lawyers at the Cato Institute? The activists at Black Lives Matter? The woke DA and his political minions? None of the above.