July 22, 2020 01:02 PM UTC

Denver To Feds: No Fascist Stormtroopers Needed, TYVM

• 3 Comments
• by: Colorado Pols

UPDATE: Eli Stokols, White House reporter for The Los Angeles Times, reports on more escalation from President Trump:

Trump, hyping “bloodshed” in cities as a pretext, announces “a surge of federal law enforcement into American communities plagued by violent crime.”

— Eli Stokols (@EliStokols) July 22, 2020

—–

As Ryan Osborne at Denver7 reports:

Denver Mayor Michael Hancock joined 13 other U.S. mayors in calling for federal law enforcement and military to stop their deployment to cities in response to protests.

“We urge you to take immediate action to withdraw your forces and agree to no further unilateral deployments in U.S. cities,” said the mayors’ letter to Attorney General William Barr and Homeland Security Chad Wolf.

The letter was signed by Hancock, along with the mayors of Portland, Seattle, Atlanta, Chicago, Washington D.C., Kansas City, Boston, Philadelphia, Los Angeles, San Jose, Oakland, Tucson and Sacramento.

CNN has more on this joint pushback by the mayors of numerous major American cities against the highly controversial deployment of federal troops of unclear origin and command structure to arrest and interrogate protesters in the vicinity (or not) of federal facilities:

The letter says federal officers have used “significant force” against Portland protesters on a nightly basis, accusing the officers of having “snatched” a person from the street and placed them in an unmarked vehicle and shooting another in the head with a munition.

The letter noted that President Donald Trump threatened to send forces to “clear out” protesters in Seattle and to “clean up” Chicago. The letter also accused federal forces of using “extreme action” against protesters in Washington, DC, without the mayor’s approval.

“The murder of George Floyd in Minneapolis sparked a national uprising and reckoning,” the letter said. “The majority of the protests have been peaceful and aimed at improving our communities. Where this is not the case, it still does not justify the use of federal forces. Unilaterally deploying these paramilitary-type forces into our cities is wholly inconsistent with our system of democracy and our most basic values.”

Although federal law enforcement officers do have jurisdiction over crimes committed on federal property, and can apprehend alleged violators of federal law anywhere, unilateral federal deployment of forces against protesters under this pretext introduces a dangerously unpredictable element in any city’s attempt to manage the situation–and let’s remember, it’s local communities that take the blame and deal with the aftermath of all of these actions.

What the Trump administration apparently doesn’t understand is the lesson that police in Denver and many other cities across the nation have learned during the recent weeks of sustained protest action against police violence: when the cops aggressively confront protesters, that only provokes more violent confrontation. When Denver Police changed tactics after days of escalating aggression and protesters responding in kind, the violence plunged and the protests changed in character to match. And while the demonstrations have not ended, the nightly pitched battles and property destruction have subsided to the point that cleanup around the hard-hit Colorado State Capitol is able to proceed.

But that’s how leaders who actually want to de-escalate the unrest gripping the nation today respond. And at this point, we cannot say with confidence that the Trump administration shares that goal. Trump is sending federal riot control police into American cities to attack, arrest, and otherwise intimidate protesters in an election year because he believes it is in his political interest to do it. While Colorado takes action to address the root cause of these protests, the President of the United States works to undo that progress by violently confronting the protests for political gain–creating a new grievance instead of redressing the old one.

There’s only one solution: for voters to show in November that this was bad politics, not just morally reprehensible.