A national outcry for better leadership

It is a tribute to America that so many people have turned out to peacefully protest yet another indefensible police killing of an unresisting black citizen. The ensuing violence, some of it obviously coordinated, is equally inexcusable. Those who commit such crimes are as great a danger to society as rogue cops are, and should suffer the full extent of the law.

Nothing in the law, though, supports the use of the U.S. military where civilian authorities have not shown themselves to be helpless. So far, none have, although it is never easy and often takes time to exert control of such situations.

President Trump’s threat to use federal troops if governors cannot “dominate” American streets is a dangerous escalation of an already inflammable instance. It feeds the schemes of extremists who believe that destabilizing America helps their subversive ambitions. They are practicing a proven strategy for delivering nations to the doorway of dictatorship.

As the leader of our nation, the president must take care that neither his actions nor his words make matters worse. But that is what he did Monday with his bellicose language and the tear-gassing of peaceful demonstrators outside the White House. It was to clear the way for him to be photographed outside a vandalized church awkwardly holding a Bible — upside down. The Episcopal Bishop of Washington said that she was “outraged” by the stunt.

The president said he, too, was “rightly sickened and revolted” by the death of George Floyd, but he does not appear to understand why the protests have been exceptionally widespread this time. It is simply because it has happened so often, with so little ever done about it.

The horror of George Floyd’s summary execution was amplified by the indifference of the four Minneapolis police officers to the presence of bystanders who were screaming at them to stop and who were recording the event with cellphone cameras. In plain sight, the police misconduct persisted for 8 minutes and 46 seconds, with a knee on Floyd’s neck even after he had stopped begging for air and calling for his mother, and lay lifeless.

What made them think they could get away with it?

It was because other rogue cops so often have.

Despite some high-profile recent convictions, abusive officers are usually not even prosecuted. Almost six years ago, a New York police officer’s chokehold took the life of Eric Garner, who had been arrested for selling cigarettes on the street. He uttered the same dying words as George Floyd: “I can’t breathe.” There were witnesses then, too, yet the officer acted with impunity.

It took New York City five years just to fire the officer who was responsible, and he was never prosecuted. Trump’s attorney general, William Barr, ordered the Civil Rights Division to end its investigation, which it did one day before the fiveyear deadline to file charges.

That sent altogether the wrong message, and there is no doubt that Barr was catering to President Trump’s wishes.

Last October, Trump announced a green light for brutality in a speech in Chicago to the International Association of Chiefs of Police. The entire tone of the speech was to encourage cops to be rough. It echoed one he gave in 2017 when he literally advised police to just let handcuffed suspects strike their heads on the doorframes of police cars.

In the most recent address, he boasted that his administration had “curtailed” — that is, abandoned — the Justice Department’s “harmful and intrusive use” of consent decrees to protect citizens from abuse.

“No longer will federal bureaucrats micromanage your local police,” he said.

Short of prosecutions, which are infrequent and less often successful, the civil injunction process is the only detached oversight the federal government can bring to bear on what is clearly a national disgrace.

“The most effective strategy by far in cleaning up a lawless police agency is oversight by a federal judge,” wrote David Couper, a retired police chief of Blue Mounds, Wisconsin, in disapproval of Trump’s speech.

President Obama’s Justice Department chose not to indict the Ferguson, Missouri, police officer who had shot and killed an unarmed black teenager, Michael Brown. It did, however, find “patterns or practices of unconstitutional conduct,” as well as concerns about how the police and courts were managed. The city agreed to become “an exemplar of modern communityoriented policing.”

There are police chiefs and sheriffs who want that for their departments, too, but they need help to overcome bad habits and attitudes that are endemic in police culture.

According to the Washington Post, Obama’s Civil Rights Division opened 25 investigations and enforced 19 agreements. There is no record of any under Trump.

It is not only the White House, however, where there needs to be a change in tone and leadership.

For far longer, the U.S. Supreme Court has been part of the problem. Five decades ago, it gave police officers virtual immunity from civil responsibility. To succeed, it ruled, a plaintiff must prove that a violation of constitutional rights be “clearly established” — in other words, there must be a precedent. But there are scarcely any precedents because of the original decision.

There are at least 10 pending appeals in which the court could undo what Associate Justice Sonia Sotomayor has denounced as “an absolute shield for law enforcement officers.” The court is running out of time to accept or schedule any for argument next term.

Trouble is, the country is running out of time for constructive leadership from Washington. That is what the peaceful protesters want most of all, and what the well-being of our nation absolutely demands. Editorials are the opinion of the Sun Sentinel Editorial Board and written by one of its members or a designee. The Editorial Board consists of Editorial Page Editor Rosemary O’Hara, Dan Sweeney, Steve Bousquet and Editor-in-Chief Julie Anderson.