One of Megyn Kelly's pet projects is to defend police officers from conscientious commissioners and prosecutors who are accountable to the people they serve and protect. Last night on The Kelly File, she expressed her disbelief that Baltimore P.D. Commissioner, Anthony Batts dared to announce that there will likely be more arrests within the department if officers act inappropriately, as they did in the Freddie Gray case. The Commissioner said,
"Our reform efforts will likely see more officers arrested. We will have more officers forced out because of their outdated, outmoded views of policing do not match the standards the community expects and demands."
How dare the police commissioner inform officers that if they behave in a criminal manner, they will be arrested! Who better to have on than notorious racist and ex-LAPD cop, Mark Fuhrman, to reaffirm the notion that not only are cops infallible, they are never the least bit racist or too aggressive.
Fuhrman jumps right in the bigot's deep end with his proclamation that "the department, the prosecutor's office, and the mayor's office lack leadership." We all know this is code for shhhh, they are black! After deeming the leadership incompetent, Marky Mark decides that these six officers are perfectly innocent and both he and Megyn are appalled that the commissioner would publicly denounce their misconduct and threaten more action if it is warranted. So what should the Baltimore Police do now? Mark advises them to
"not go that extra mile."
Fuhrman also said that
"crime is going to go up, and it's going to be a long hot summer in Baltimore."
Basically, that's what you get when the police aren't allowed to do whatever they damned well please, which includes, in Fuhrman's opinion, profiling black people for being so... black.
Megyn doesn't like the threatening tone by Commissioner Batts. Fuhrman has the answer:
"Let's get the definitions down in Baltimore so they know what they're playing with. What's his definition of a bad cop? What's his definition of too much use of force? What's his definition of racism? They should know the rules before they go out on the street and expose themselves and their families, quite possibly, to a court proceeding and possibly prison time."
Kelly's big problem is the fact that there is the threat of retribution for misconduct before misconduct has even occurred.
It shouldn't surprise anyone that Mark Furhman has the same 'let's take the fight to them before they can take it to us' attitude shared by those who practiced The Bush Doctrine. He said,
"And all the special units and all the special activity that's needed to actually take the fight to suspects instead of waiting for those suspects to commit a crime, takes a lot of morale, it takes a lot of backing by your leaders, it takes a feeling in a unit that somebody has your back."
The fact that the commissioner is informing cops they can't act in a manner that is truly abhorrent means the commissioner automatically doesn't have their back. Both Kelly and Fuhrman think the First Amendment rights of the cops are threatened because they are 'not allowed to go to the press' or there will be negative consequences. I'm not sure very many cops have ever publicly gone to the press to malign or denounce their commissioner without fearing some sort of consequence. This is nothing new at all, but these two actors want the audience to believe it's a brand new phenomenon, which should make everyone upset.
As far as these two are concerned, the conduct of police officers should be less scrutinized and every single cop, no matter what, should be given the benefit of the doubt and the presumption of innocence. All those stories involving Eric Garner, Walter Scott, Freddie Gray and Tamir Rice were anomalies and have never been problematic for the community. With the help of a bigot like Mark Fuhrman, Fox "News" once again pretends a very real problem doesn't exist. Hell, they pretended the Bush Doctrine was a good idea, so what do we expect?
