Tough on crime

As you will recall, Trump recently bleated that a "top cop" in Chicago told him that the police could end the crime spree which -- in the Trumper imagination -- is now besetting our cities. The cure is simple, says Trump: We just need to let our cops get tough. Really, really tough. No more Mr. Nice Cop. Unleash the Kraken. 

Maybe Trump wants our constabulary to shoot black people on sight.

Trump has also said that 95% of African Americans will vote for him in 2020 -- even though they hate him right now, and even though, as a landlord, Trump routinely refused to rent to black people. Is Trump implying that black people will vote at gunpoint...?

Turns out that the claim about Trump meeting a "top cop" in Chicago simply is not true.

“We’ve discredited this claim months ago,” CPD spokesperson Frank Giancamilli said in a statement. “No one in the senior command at CPD has ever met with Donald Trump or a member of his campaign.”

In his statement, Giancamilli also disputed that “tough” tactics were the most effective way for police to reduce crime.

“The best way to address crime is through a commitment to community policing and a commitment to stronger laws to keep illegal guns and repeat violent offenders off the street,” he said.

Here's the thing: You can still find many places on the internet where Trump supporters decry Bill Clinton's supposed racism. Why do they call him a racist? Because Clinton signed the Omnibus Crime Bill -- and never mind the inconvenient fact that said bill was supported by the Congressional Black Caucus at the time. The Trumpers want you to believe that Bill Clinton is personally responsible for the increased incarceration of so many black males.

In the real world, of course, the increased incarceration rate resulted from changes in state law, not the federal law signed by Bill Clinton.

Never mind all of that for the moment. Right now, let's contemplate the great hypocrisy of the Trumpers. They slam Bill Clinton for signing an overly-harsh crime bill -- yet at the same time, they call for "tough cops" in our urban centers who will kick butt and get-er-done, untethered by any petty restrictive nonsense about constitutional rights or fairness or human decency. How can the Trumpers slam the Omnibus Crime Bill while defending (for example) what Baltimore's cops did to Freddie Gray?

As you ponder that question, here's another poser for you to chew on. How could Trump -- or any other president -- "unleash the Kraken" which supposedly lurks within the nation's many police departments? Policing is a local matter and and a state matter. The Constitution limits what a President can do.

Either Trump has never read the Constitution, or he has a plan to escape its constraints.