BAKER DEFENDS COPS
On heels of Warren rhetoric, gov says police get bum rap
Gov. Charlie Baker became the latest politician to push back on U.S. Sen. Elizabeth Warren’s comments that the criminal-justice system is “racist … front to back,” giving a full-throated defense of police.
“They absolutely feel like they’ve been on the wrong end of a lot of the rhetoric that’s gone on in this country for quite a while,” Baker said when pressed by the Herald yesterday about Warren’s statements.
Baker said he often hears complaints from police about a lack of public support.
“A lot of these folks they feel like, yeah, they come to work every day, they put their lives on the line, they do what they need to do to keep us safe and some people don’t appreciate it,” Baker said
Baker reiterated yesterday he intends to push for measures in Massachusetts to crack down on the release of dangerous career criminals — an issue highlighted by recent killings of police officers in which suspects had been previously bailed — while also noting that the system should include more ways of helping people who “made a mistake.”
“That’s a better way to talk about this stuff,” Baker said of Warren’s remarks.
Warren was speaking recently at Dillard University in New Orleans when she said that the justice system is “racist … front to back.” After coming under blistering criticism from police officers and her political opponents, the Democratic senator dialed back her criticism on Saturday, praising the bravery of individual cops while maintaining that there remain structural issues in the justice system that need to be addressed.
U.S. Rep. Seth Moulton, a Salem Democrat whose name — like Warren’s — is often bandied about for a 2020 presidential run, sided with the senator.
“There are aspects of the justice system that are clearly racist in their results. That doesn’t mean that everybody who works in the justice system is a racist,” Moulton told the Herald yesterday. “There are some real racial disparities in our justice system that need to be fixed.”