Let’s examine the dilemma imposed on cops by activists like King. If American police “refuse to do their jobs when more paperwork is required,” he retorts, “it’s symptomatic of an entirely broken system in need of an overhaul.” This is the same King who as recently as October fumed that “nothing happening in this country appears to be slowing down.” King scoffs at the suggestion that a new 70-question street-stop form imposed on the CPD by the ACLU is partly responsible for the drop-off in engagement. Over 100 people were shot in the first ten days of 2016. King now accuses police in Chicago of not “doing their job,” as a result of which “people are dying.” Stops in Chicago are down nearly 90 percent this year through the end of March, compared with the same period in 2015 shootings were up 78 percent and homicides up 62 percent through April 10. And the Left is once again denouncing the police-this time for not doing enough policing. As a result, violent crime in cities with large black populations has shot up-homicides in the largest 50 cities rose nearly 17 percent in 2015. In response to the incessant accusations of racism and the heightened hostility in the streets that has followed the Michael Brown shooting, officers have pulled back from making investigatory stops and enforcing low-level offenses in many urban areas. Black Lives Matter activist Shaun King launched a petition after the 2014 shooting of Michael Brown in Ferguson, Missouri, demanding that Attorney General Eric Holder “meet with local black and brown youth across the country who are dealing with ‘Zero Tolerance’ and ‘Broken Windows’ policing.”
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In March 2015, for example, the ACLU of Illinois accused the Chicago Police Department of “targeting” minorities because stops are “disproportionately concentrated in the black community.”Įqually vilified was Broken Windows policing, which responds to low-level offenses such as graffiti, disorderly conduct, and turnstile jumping. Pedestrian stops-otherwise known as stop, question, and frisk-were attacked as a bigoted oppression of minority communities. Will the anti-cop Left please figure out what it wants? For more than a decade, activists have demanded the end of proactive policing, claiming that it was racist.