(Freedom.news) The city council of Ferguson, Missouri, refused to be bullied by the Obama “Justice” Dept., so like a petulant child, the president sicced his attorney general on them.
As noted by Breitbart News, AG Loretta Lynch announced last week that her department will sue the cash-strapped St. Louis-area suburb because council members would not approve an expensive deal that was essentially forced upon them by federal negotiators.
That rejection “leaves us no further choice,” Lynch said in a prepared statement, adding that Ferguson residents “have waited decades for justice. They should not be forced to wait any longer.”
The racially mixed city council, with backing from local residents, rejected Lynch’s “justice” unanimously because of the negative financial impact it would have on the struggling city’s budget.
Breitbart News reported further:
The deal between the Department of Justice and the city of Ferguson was drafted after President Barack Obama’s administration investigated the city following the 2014 shooting death of Mike Brown, an 18-year-old black man who had accosted a store owner and then a white police officer. Widespread local misinformation about the shooting led to local riots and looting, as well as angry protests by the Black Lives Matter movement across the country.
Mind you, the Justice Dept. went on to exonerate the officer, Darren Wilson, in his shooting death of Brown (which was nice of the department to do that, considering that a grand jury also exonerated him prior to Justice getting involved). But the then-Eric Holder-led department couldn’t help but take a swipe at the city nevertheless, being critical with its criminal justice system. DoJ accused the city of using its police department and courts to generate revenue through ticketing – which, even if true, has nothing to do with race and certainly wouldn’t make Ferguson, Missouri, the only city in the U.S. to do that.
The DoJ deal reached last month would have required Ferguson to implement several expensive changes that included [ironically] raises for police officers, more training and the hiring of what amounted to a government nanny to oversee things.
“The costs would have required a tax increase on citizens,” Brietbart reported. “But after parts of the city were set fire by Black Lives Matter protesters, Ferguson has had a budget deficit of about $2.5 million.”
At a meeting before the council voted – a meeting that was monitored, via video feed, by federal nannies at the DoJ, angry residents complained and they, like city council members, said they could not afford to implement the plan.
The council did at least offer some changes to the deal, with black councilman Wesley Bell saying, “This is a way to meet the demands of the D.O.J., make progress with reform and keep lights on in the city.”
Lynch’s response: Nope. Better to completely bankrupt the city and grab control over its police force in a punishing move. Yes; that will improve the lives of Ferguson residents.
Note that the Ferguson suit is one of several launched by Obama’s DoJ against police departments all over the country. The administration is using a 21-year-old statute “to impose reforms on police forces that show a pattern of civil rights violations,” as Time has reported, but the problem with that arrangement is that the federal government – in this case, the Left-wing ideologues at Obama’s DoJ – get to decide what amounts to a “pattern.”
Like Ferguson, other cities targeted by Justice – including New Orleans and Detroit – have lamented the manifestly insane costs associated with federal police nannies.
It wasn’t supposed to be this way. And it shouldn’t be this way. They are called “local police” for a reason; and local populations, through their elected officials, will address problems as they see them. They don’t need Nanny Lynch telling them when to act.
In the meantime, hopefully a presidential candidate is taking notes and documenting these kinds of federal abuses of power and is pledging to reign them in. Hopefully that candidate is an originalist who understands the proper balance our founders established between roles of federal, state and local governments. Hopefully that candidate agrees that political expediency is no substitute for constitutional expediency.
And, hopefully, that is the candidate who will win in November.
See also:
