It’s hard to believe Biden’s backflips on police. In 2020, Biden allowed “defund police” to grow, calling America’s law enforcement “systemically” racist. In 2021, he backed off. Now, despite record police murders, Biden plans an Executive Order (EO) crippling police self-defense, changing “use of force.”
Against the advice of every major police union, Supreme Court precedent, State and Federal statute, Biden hopes to impose on police a new standard for self-defense – in effect, raising personal risk, liability, and danger to all law enforcement officers.
The audacity of Biden’s move is breathtaking, in view of the triple threat presented to public safety by Biden’s current policies – record murders of police (including in 2022), spiking homicides, and elevated street crime. It suggests the Biden White House is stuck in ideological quicksand – utterly beholden to the far left.
On top of homicides jumping 29 percent in 2020 and high crime across major cities, murders of police officers rose 59 percent in 2021, and continue to rise.
Moreover, “a significant portion of those fatalities were ambushes, which were up 91 percent by mid-2021,” and “through April 26 of this year, gun murders of cops are up another 13 percent over … 2021,” while “shootings of officers, lethal and nonlethal, were up 43 percent …”.
A leaked version of the EO reasserts “systemic” racism across law enforcement, while also putting men in women’s prisons (for transgender equity). It then pushes the new “use of force” standard, intended to hobble police response.
Even the New York Times writes: “Under current law, officers may shoot if they fear for their lives or those of people around them,” while Biden’s EO allows deadly force only “as a last resort when there is no reasonable alternative, in other words only when necessary to prevent imminent and serious bodily injury or death.” Officers will be sued to prove “no alternative” and “imminent and serious” injury or death.
The effect of this new standard, forcing officers to risk death or wounding by withholding “use of force” when traditionally allowed, produces a cascade of effects endangering police and the public.
First, officers – already being shot in record numbers – will face greater danger. They will be forced to withhold self-defense and defense of others when confronting deadly force, or risk elevated civil and criminal liability. That is an unconscionable choice, particularly for peace officers.
Second, the likelihood grows that any officer, faced with such a lose-lose proposition, will delay, avert, and avoid engagements, raising civilian risk. This is especially troubling at a time when fear, crime, and civilian homicides are spiking.
Third, placing police at elevated risk for liability, death, and wounding adds to the pressure Democrats have already put on police morale, retention, and recruiting.
Fourth, the White House expectation is that demanding this new standard for federal law enforcement will push State and local police to accept it, since federal grants can be made conditional on acceptance of the federal standards, coercion.
Finally, this idea – an EO shaped by Biden, Harris, and White House advisors like Susan Rice to collar law enforcement in the name of “reform” – will drive the wedge deeper between Democrats and law enforcement, if not also the public.
Net-net, keeping up with anti-police sentiment in this While House – and among top Democrats – is hard. Just when you think they may have learned “defunding” and blanket accusations are a bad idea, they trot out more bad ideas.
Simply put, Democrats are stuck in ideological quicksand, beholden to the far left, even as most of America worries about public safety, and dials 911. As a result, the political party dialing 911 after November, may be the Democrats.