The Patriot Post® · Another 'Racist' Police Department?

From the administration that’s squandered seven years of opportunity to mend racial divides — scratch that; the administration that’s fomented racial divides — comes a new report that threatens to drive the wedge of racial tension even deeper. This week, Barack Obama’s Social Justice™ Department issued a report concluding that the Baltimore Police Department is systemically racist. Not facing occurrences of racism. Not occasionally having some officers display racist actions. Downright racist — the whole department.

The Associated Press, which is more than happy to perpetuate the Left’s racial grievance narrative, reports, “With startling statistics, a federal investigation of the Baltimore Police Department documents in 164 single-spaced pages what black residents have been saying for years: They are routinely singled out, roughed up or otherwise mistreated by officers, often for no reason.”

Certainly, it would be naïve to claim racism doesn’t exist or that all cops are saints — but categorically declaring the police department of an entire major city as the KKK in blue suggests there’s more to the story than the so-called “startling” statistics.

Indeed, when you consider what’s missing from the report from this 15-month federal investigation, the statistics may seem more selective than startling. For example, while the investigation was prompted by the death of Freddie Gray while in police custody, the Washington Post notes, “Justice Department investigators did not focus … on Gray’s death in particular. That is part of a separate, ongoing federal investigation. Instead, they assessed generally how police do their jobs in Baltimore.”

You’ll recall that all six Baltimore officers involved in the Gray case were either acquitted or had charges thrown out, despite the city’s settling with Gray’s family for an astounding $6.4 million. That notwithstanding, the city’s mayor was cheered as she gaveled in the Democrat National Convention last month.

Nevertheless, the city’s police are racist. This is strikingly similar to Ferguson, Missouri, where the Justice Department cleared police officer Darren Wilson in the death of Michael Brown yet still concluded Ferguson’s police are racist all the same.

Also intriguing, to say the least, is that numbers provided by the Baltimore Police Department showed more than half of the city’s active duty police officers are minorities — black, Hispanic, Asian or Native American — including more than half of the city’s police officers with the rank of captain and higher.

What is the Justice Department really getting at by targeting the department with accusations of racism? In the end, like everything Barack Obama does, this is about one thing: control. As Jazz Shaw observes, “In perhaps the most chilling section of the account, the Attorney General is said to be seeking a court-enforceable consent decree to force the police agency to commit to improving its procedures in order to avoid a lawsuit. … Local policing, traditionally under the control of the state or municipal government, will be met with lawsuits brought against these same local entities if Washington doesn’t approve of their performance.”

Yes, Baltimore, you must now conform to the federal government’s dictates — or else.

Of course, this shouldn’t surprise anyone. This is the same federal government that wants to control kids’ education, make neighborhoods comply with federal racial quotas, dictate Americans’ health care, force nuns to pay for contraception and abortion, require schools to let boys in girls’ locker rooms… and the list goes on.

Just like community policing, all of these are either local, state, or “none of the government’s business” issues. But when it comes to control, Washington recognizes no boundaries.

Meanwhile, following Obama’s pattern of attacking the men and women in blue who keep us safe every day, Hillary Clinton isn’t even trying to earn the endorsement of the National Fraternal Order of Police, which represents 335,000 members. The union’s president rightly observed that this “sends a powerful message” — and not a good one.

It seems the Left’s new hallmark is opposing the members of the Thin Blue Line who, despite the snub, continue putting their lives on the line, even for those who least appreciate it.