Category Archives: law enforcement

Invasion

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Our president has decided cities with Democratic mayors are so hopelessly overridden by violent crime that the only solution is an invasion by federal forces who presumably will get rid of the crime problem.

Your observer isn’t sure criminals in those cities should start “shaking in their boots” because of his rhetoric, but he sure scares the hell out of me.

His insertion of 114 federal law enforcement agents into Portland a couple of weeks ago ostensibly to protect the federal courthouse from “anarchists” (a nice phrase borrowed from the late 19th and early 20th centuries) has shown to many of his critics that he is a man with a can.

Not a man with a PLAN.  A man with a can

—of gasoline.

The behavior of those agents, captured on cell phones and in stories of some of those hauled into vans and spirited away to lockups, does not indicate that this strategy is providing any significant increase in the protection of the general population, nor is it showing any concern for stopping violent crime—unless you consider all protestors to be in the same league with murderers, rapists, armed robbers, arsonists, and others of that ilk.

Based on reports we have read and seen, the presence of these forces has intensified the protests in Portland.

A few days ago Portland’s mayor was among those gassed by federal agents. Our president found that gleeful. “They knocked the hell out of him,” he declared.

How he wants to “help the cities” is something few of us could ever have imagined and few of us want to contemplate. “We’ll go into all of the cities, any of the cities. We’ll put in fifty-thousand, sixty-thousand people that really know what they’re doing. They’re strong. They’re tough. And we can solve these problems so fast,” he told a FOX interviewer last week, adding, “but as you know, we have to be invited in.”

He says it but he doesn’t believe it—the part about being invited in, that is.

So far he has sent or threatened to send agents to Kansas City and Portland, Chicago and Albuquerque.

Let’s do some invasion math—-because what he’s proposing isn’t assistance. It’s invasion.

Number of mayors asking for hundreds (and ultimately thousands perhaps) of agents to come in to fight violent crime: 0

Number of governors who have asked for such actions by the Trump administration: 0

Number of congressional delegations who have sought this “help” in their states: 0

One of the first surges of federal agents was the insertion of 225 of them into Kansas City to help catch and prosecute violent criminals. The administration says it is sending more.

Number of violent crime charges the administration claims have been filed in Kansas City since Operation Legend began: 200

Number of charges really filed by federal prosecutors: 1

Attorney General William Barr last week, speaking of Operation Legend, said, “Just to give you an idea of what’s possible, the FBI went in very strong into Kansas City and within two weeks we’ve had 200 arrests,”

That was news to the U. S. Attorney who told inquisitive reporters for The Kansas City Star that his office has filed ONE charge and it was against a guy with a drug conviction on his record who had a gun. Convicted felons cannot have guns under the law.

Last weekend, Kansas City Mayor Quinton Lucas said on FOX News Sunday he welcomed the federal agents in his town, but for a “pinpointed and targeted focus on solving murders.”  But he was frustrated by our president’s rhetoric about the George Floyd Protests and the Black Lives Matter movement because “that’s not the case in Kansas City.”

“What we don’t need is more fuel on the fire from federal agents to make, I think, an exciting political issue.”

He told NBC’s Chuck Todd our president’s talk about Black Lives Matter protests causing murders is “asinine” as well as “inaccurate and unfair” and does nothing to address the real issue—national gun trafficking that make guns readily available on cities’ streets.

There are many people, whether they are supporters of our president or supporters of someone else, who argue the cause of states’ rights. These actions should provide fertile ground for spirited arguments on both sides of whether the federal government has a right to invade cities at the whim of a president, a person who thinks he can order fifty or sixty thousand people “who really know what they’re doing” into a city for whatever purpose he might have—including looking good to his political base by creating “an exciting political issue.” Forget about any invitation.

States rights advocates, in our observations, generally seem to fall on the right side of the political spectrum.  But we haven’t heard or seen any of those folks questioning the administration’s uninvited invasion of cities as a violation of states rights. We might have missed it, but the issue deserves louder discussions than we have heard. There is no doubt that discussion will take place. Among judges.

The administration’s choice of locations for these invasions also is curious. The most recent FBI final non-preliminary data (whatever that means) that we’ve seen for cities with the highest violent crime rate lists none of these cities among the top 20 cities for violent crime. Kansas City is 23rd.

It is interesting that our president was not as concerned about mobilizing federal forces to fight a pandemic as he has been in fighting mostly-legal protests (destroying public buildings is hardly legal). You might recall that early in the pandemic, states were pleading with the administration to help them find the equipment needed to fight the virus, particularly the protective equipment needed to protect those on the front lines.  But the states were told to fend for themselves, that federal help was a “last resort,” at a time when many states were seeing the federal government in precisely that way and our president said he felt no responsibility for the spread of the virus.

The administration’s handling of the pandemic has undermined our president’s re-election hopes.  He hopes to regain that ground by his “tough on crime” approach.  A key question for the public to consider is whether his approach has been appropriate in either case.

He relied on the Tenth Amendment for his defense that fighting the virus was a state responsibility. States and cities see Tenth Amendment as their defense on the local issue of crime.  This crime-fighting strategy already is headed to the courts. It appears the pandemic defense is headed to the ballot box.

The polls indicate most potential voters consider his response (or non-response, depending on the way the question was answered) in the spring produced tragic results. We can only hope the crime fighting strategy of the summer does not also turn tragic before the courts define the bounds of presidential power exercised or suggested by the man with a can.

(For those who lean right who see this entry as an attack on them, we plan our next entry to question the left, with the rights of states at the center of that argument, too.)

Notes from a quiet street (composed on a cold and dreary March day)

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Think the “me too” movement is new?   Consider this report from the Union Franklin County Tribune of December 12, 1913:

“Because Mike Kincannon of Joplin, a patrolman on the police force, told the wife of a prominent railroad man to ‘go home and get some clothes on’ when he saw her on the street wearing a slit skirt, his resignation was demanded by Chief of Police J. H. Myers.  Complaint of the patrolman’s orders to the woman were filed by the woman’s husband.”

(Isn’t that a little intriguing? Some creative writer could take that story and structure various narratives stemming from at least two questions: Why was the woman (especially a married woman) wearing a “slit skirt” on the street in those days?  Why did the husband complain? And what happened to Kincannon after that? What did HIS wife tell him after hearing of the comment? This, my friends, is a potential short story on the hoof.)

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By now we all should have learned to consider March with suspicion.  December was a plunge into the darkness and cold of winter. January was the depths but that faint light in the distance was February which, while still not pleasant, at least raise hopes with the realization that it was a short month and by the end of it men would be playing baseball and racing cars again. Then comes March and we inevitably expect more of it than it deserves. Even the spring solstice on March 21 does not bring lasting relief.  Although April is considered the “cruelest month,” it nonetheless brings us greening grass and budding trees and the promise of May. Let us be patient and tolerant of March.  It cannot help itself.

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We were talking to a friend the other day who has heard confident predictions that President Trump could be elected for four more years in 2020. “The chances are good that he’ll get the nomination as long as political parties have ‘Winner Take All’ or ‘Winner Take Most’ primaries in which someone with thirty percent of the vote gets one-hundred percent of the delegates,” she said.  “If political parties had proportional primaries, conventions might be worth paying attention to again. The 2016 Republican convention sure would have been if the primaries had been proportional in awarding delegates.”

I didn’t ask her when she’d start wearing a MCGA hat—Make Conventions Great Again.

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Governor Parson knows that we can’t keep letting our roads and bridges turn to rust and rubble.  That’s why he’s out banging the drum for his bond issue proposal.  He really doesn’t have much of a choice, given voter resistance to any kind of a fuel tax increase that might keep a school bus or two from winding up in a creek.  But there’s a cost that does with issuing bonds.

All of us who ever borrowed money—whether it was to buy a car, a house, a daughter’s wedding, or to pay some backed-up bills—knows that we’ll have to pay off those loans.  And making payments on loans reduces the amount of money in our general bank account, limiting our choices in buying food, taking vacations, buying some nice things from time to time.

Because we as citizens refuse to pay for it now, we’ll pay for it later.  A long time later.

But somebody has to do something to keep school buses out of creeks.

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The city council in Jefferson City passed a resolution Monday night urging every citizen of the town who comes in contact with members of the legislature to tell them how much it would mean to the city to build a national steamboat museum here. Legislative employees, landlords who rent space to lawmakers, businesses that serve them food and libations, stores that sell them clothes or tires—anybody who sees a legislator needs to get in their ears about passing the bills financing this museum project, says the resolution in so many words.

Yes, I instigated it.  Not sure how the Missouri Ethics Commission will handle registering an entire city as a lobbyist but if it does figure it out, I’ll pay the ten dollar registration fee.

 

Special, but not a blue plate special

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Your correspondent was concerned for several months that he might have to get a new car—because a proposed new license plate just wouldn’t look good.

You see, Missouri will be celebrating the two-hundredth anniversary of becoming part of the Union four years from now and a special committee has been working on the design of a special Missouri Bicentennial license plate.   Some of you might have cast votes for the five original proposals:


They’re varying shades of blue. And they just wouldn’t look nearly as nice as the current white Bluebird plates look on my white car.  They’d disrupt the entire color scheme.  Indescribable angst was increasing.

A lot of people voted for the one they thought was the best of an admittedly bland lot. But in defense of the people who designed these candidates, there was only so much they could do given state laws that regulate the layout of license plates and the Highway Patrol’s preference for plates with high visibility.

State law requires the renewal stickers to be in the middle of the plate. That was done by the legislature several years ago when authorities saw an increasing number of sticker thefts, often by people using metal cutters to cut they off the corners of the license plates.  To foil the thieves, the law was changed so the stickers are in the middle.  That, of course, imposes some limits on how a new plate for general circulation can be designed.

The Patrol took these blue sample plates out on the road to test their visibility and decided the original idea of having light numbers on a dark plate wasn’t going to work.

Great news!

So the license plate commission went back to work.  And this is what most of us will have on the front and backs of our cars by January 1, 2019:

That’s so much better.

Missouri was due for a new license plate anyway.  The current design has been around since 2009 and license plates are considered to have about a ten-year life before they get bent up too much or their reflective nature gets too dull for troopers’ eyes, or other stuff happens to them.

Representative Glen Kolkmeyer of Odessa found himself being asked to sponsor the bicentennial plate bill a couple of years ago.  He had only a few days to draft the bill and get it moving in the House.  But he made it so that the plate will be available for the era that will include Missouri’s statehood bicentennial, the centennial of the dedication of the state capitol, AND the national sestercentennial, the 250th anniversary.

This plate will be the one that most of us use.  Its design will not affect those who like to have specialty plates on their vehicles—which caused us to look into how many specialty plates the state of Missouri issues.  Wanna guess (turn away from the rest of this column for a few seconds before reading on for the answer)?

This year marks for fortieth anniversary, as nearly as we can tell from a Department of Revenue list, of the first specialty license plate.  In 1977, the legislature allowed amateur radio operators and disabled veterans to have license plates with special designs.

Since then the legislature has added another two hundred and one. It almost seems as if everybody has a specialty license plate but hangnail survivors.  And that doesn’t count the separate plates for various kinds of trucks, cycles, antique vehicles, and Lord knows what else.

Imagine being a police officer trying to run a license check.  The first thing you have to do is figure out if it’s a Missouri plate.  Take a look at http://www.theus50.com/fastfacts/licenses-state.php to see how many state plates are similar.  Then imagine all of the car dealers who think they should turn your car into a mini-billboard by sticking their own license plate bracket on your car—which obscures some plate features that might make it easier to decide what state’s plate it is.   A little road dirt, too, and the poor law enforcement officer has to struggle.

Well, anyway—Missouri is getting a new license plate that calls us to remember we didn’t get to be the way we are yesterday.  It’s taken two centuries to make us what we are in the Union—and there were some years when a lot of misery was expended to determine that we’d continue in it.

The plate’s red, white, and blue motif suggests the colors of the stripes of our state flag.  The wavy lines at the top and the bottom remind us that the great rivers have shaped and defined our borders and our character and opened parts of the state for settlement.  They remain major influences today.  The state seal is in the middle, as it is in the middle of our state’s greatest symbol—the capitol.

The Missouri Bicentennial, which is being coordinated by the State Historical Society of Missouri, will afford us a chance to consider how we got to be what and who we are.  But we hope it also will afford us an opportunity to reflect on what we can be and should be in the years before a tercentennial plate is issued.

So it’s not just another piece of metal that should be on the front and back of our cars, whatever color they might be.  And the reflective nature of the plate isn’t something of value only to police officers; it’s something for all of us.