Milwaukee County Sheriff David Clarke (D) said that President Obama “shouldn’t be taking any side” on “local issues” of racial bias in law enforcement on Friday’s “Your World with Neil Cavuto” on the Fox News Channel.
Responding to comments the president made regarding racial bias in law enforcement, Clarke said “he shouldn’t be taking any side. These are local issues and he should just stick with that. Those two things are mutually exclusive, because if a law enforcement officer is racist and extremely biased, I don’t care how good they are, they don’t belong in the profession. So, he can’t have it both ways.” Although he did not express opposition to the Justice Department investigating the Ferguson case.
“Why can’t he just stop when he says the overwhelming majority of law enforcement officers go out and do a great job, period, the end. And then he goes and makes that statement about police officers have problems or target people who don’t look like them, and that’s a myth. He said there are studies. Neil, there are no studies that suggest that. This is not a training issue. We don’t train law enforcement officers to racially profile. We don’t train law enforcement officers to target people. What we train officers to do is target behavior. Are there biases in society? Everybody has biases. I’m biased against criminals and criminal behavior. But that doesn’t mean I’m going out every day on the street, like law enforcement officers all across the country, and engaging in this nefarious conduct to target black males just because they’re black. He might believe that. But I don’t” Clarke added.
Clarke also criticized Attorney General Eric Holder, saying “he said we’re going to end racial profiling once and for all in this country, when it had nothing to do with the situation at all. So what he did, and I think it’s cruel when you do that to people, is he set people up with this false sense that the federal government was going to do the right thing and make this thing right when the facts were that Officer Wilson acted reasonably, justifiably, under the rule of law…let’s get this chapter behind us, and move forward.” And “at some point, the President of the United States, and Attorney General Eric Holder should bow out of this, not have anything else to say about it and let Ferguson, Missouri and the rest of the United States move on.”
Follow Ian Hanchett on Twitter @IanHanchett
COMMENTS
Please let us know if you're having issues with commenting.