Pirate's Cove

Or, should this be a witch hunt

President Obama has launched a major crackdown on big city police departments to make sure officers are behaving themselves on the ground.

In a major shift in policy since the Bush era, ‘civil rights investigators’ are being sent out by Obama’s Justice Department to large urban police departments to investigate claims of racial bias, sexual discrimination and complaints of officers being too heavy handed.

The move has been welcomed by civil rights campaigners but critics say it is a wholly ‘unnecessary’ interference which will tighten bureaucracy and make it harder for officers to do their job.

Certainly, there have been instances of police officers going over the line, as shown in the story. Yet

A police officer on the blog Duke’s Blotter wrote: ‘Not all police officers are perfect and some might even be criminal but it does not mean that we need to make the whole profession look criminal.

‘We all understand the “one bad apple” argument but more time should be spent on showing it is just one bad apple than on making the entire barrel look bad.’

Also, this is yet another case of federal overreach in violation of the 10th Amendment. Where’s the ACLU? They complained about all students being treated as suspects last week, and they complain (along with so many liberals) about treating all Muslim men as suspects at the airport, yet, they seem to have no problem treating all police officers as potential civil rights violators.

Oh, and it’s Bush’s fault

Civil rights campaigners welcomed the move, saying it was about time proper investigations were launched into perceived Bush-era abuses such as prosecution of whistle-blowers and torture.

‘Under the Bush administration, the Justice Department disappeared here in terms of federal civil rights enforcement. You could see the shift to counter-terrorism at the ground level after September 11,’

Mary Howell, a New Orleans civil rights attorney, told Salon. ‘Now they’re back doing criminal prosecutions of police and the civil rights investigation, which is huge.’

Yeah, let’s harass police for doing their jobs.