Fox News Favorite ‘People’s Sheriff’ Should Drop The Act

Milwaukee County’s David Clarke could be a valu­able voice in the nation­al con­ver­sa­tion over police vio­lence. Instead he’s on Fox News blam­ing ‘black under­class sub­cul­ture behavior.’

Our sher­iff isn’t like most American sher­iffs. He’s a self-pro­claimed Democrat, an out­spo­ken Tea Party

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activist, and a reg­u­lar on prime time cable news.

You may have seen Milwaukee County Sheriff David Clarke on one of his numer­ous appear­ances on the Fox News Channel lash­ing out at President Obama. You might rec­og­nize him from his appear­ance before the National Rifle Association propos­ing the place­ment of a semi-auto­mat­ic rifle on our country’s pres­i­den­tial seal. You may have even watched his infa­mous 2013 cam­paign ad advo­cat­ing vig­i­lan­tism instead of dial­ing 911 in the event of a burglary.

The coun­try is just now get­ting to know Sheriff Clarke, but I’m all too famil­iar with his inflam­ma­to­ry antics. His pro­cliv­i­ty for provo­ca­tion cou­pled with his dis­tort­ed view of black America has grown more extreme over the years, earn­ing him numer­ous appear­ances on Fox News. He has helped the net­work spread a slew of dan­ger­ous nar­ra­tives that serve only to rouse the most extreme ele­ments of the Tea Party.

It’s clear that Fox News and Sheriff Clarke have devel­oped a sym­bi­ot­ic rela­tion­ship. He needs the cable news net­work for its nation­al plat­form; Fox needs a black sher­iff to give voice to the dog-whis­tle nar­ra­tives its anchors dare not vocal­ize them­selves. Do you think Megyn Kelly could get away with mak­ing the claim that racial inequal­i­ty is a thing of the past or call­ing Attorney General Eric Holder a “race hustler”?

As easy as it is to be enraged by Sheriff Clarke’s fla­grant grand­stand­ing, we should rec­og­nize that he isn’t the prob­lem but only a symp­tom. In today’s con­ser­v­a­tive media land­scape, the need to inflame will always under­mine the respon­si­bil­i­ty to inform, and report­ing will always take a back­seat to rat­ings. Both Fox News and Sheriff Clarke real­ize that one can bypass the com­plex­i­ties and nuances of sen­si­tive top­ics by sim­ply main­tain­ing the us ver­sus them approach used by right-wing media giant Ann Coulter.

But the sheriff’s brand of hos­tile pun­dit­ry is espe­cial­ly irre­spon­si­ble com­ing from some­one wear­ing a uni­form and badge.

Last month dur­ing a con­gres­sion­al com­mit­tee hear­ing on polic­ing strate­gies, Sheriff Clarke was giv­en an oppor­tu­ni­ty to address the strained rela­tion­ship between police and the com­mu­ni­ties they’re sworn to pro­tect. Rather than pro­vid­ing the com­mit­tee with the sen­si­ble tes­ti­mo­ny one would expect from a law enforce­ment offi­cial with 37 years of expe­ri­ence, he offered some of the same ugly, accusato­ry rhetoric we’ve come to expect from Milwaukee’s new Tea Party folk hero.

Sheriff Clarke’s bit­ing tem­pera­ment was on full dis­play as he vil­i­fied the fed­er­al gov­ern­ment for inter­ven­ing in local law enforce­ment issues and slammed the “lib­er­al main­stream media” for their cov­er­age of high-pro­file shoot­ings. He con­tin­ued his ongo­ing abso­lu­tion of America’s police from any and all wrong­do­ing and insist­ed that “black under­class sub­cul­ture behav­ior” and hash­tags like #BlackLivesMatter are the crux of the problem.

The self-pro­claimed “people’s sher­iff” needs to drop the sideshow act and get serious.

When we iden­ti­fy the obvi­ous racial inequities in our soci­ety, we do so in our desire to repair that which is bro­ken, not to demo­nize those who have com­mit­ted their lives to pro­tect­ing the pub­lic. We rec­og­nize that good police offi­cers play a vital role in our com­mu­ni­ties, but we can no longer be com­pla­cent in a cul­ture that breeds bad ones. Citizens, law­mak­ers, and com­mu­ni­ty stake­hold­ers should to be able to debate these issues thought­ful­ly and express our col­lec­tive frus­tra­tion over our country’s fail­ure to live up to its promise of “jus­tice for all” with­out Sheriff Clarke and oth­ers call­ing us “cop haters” and “crim­i­nal-lov­ing elitists.”

Sheriff Clarke and his Tea Party fol­low­ers live in a black-and-white world where mere­ly inves­ti­gat­ing accu­sa­tions of police dis­crim­i­na­tion and racial mis­treat­ment is tan­ta­mount to trea­son. He is unapolo­getic in his blind defense of law enforce­ment offi­cials, even in the most egre­gious cir­cum­stances. After the Justice Department released its report detail­ing “unlaw­ful bias” among Ferguson’s police force, Sheriff Clarke imme­di­ate­ly took to Fox to emphat­i­cal­ly reject the find­ings, call­ing them a “witch hunt.” “I’m not buy­ing one word of [Holder’s] con­clu­sion,” he told Neil Cavuto. “The attor­ney gen­er­al doesn’t have any integri­ty anymore.”

Unlike Sheriff Clarke, I refuse to dis­miss this grow­ing cri­sis. Recently, I intro­duced an amend­ment to a fed­er­al spend­ing bill that would increase fund­ing for the Mentally Ill Offender Treatment and Crime Reduction Act, enhanc­ing train­ing for police respond­ing to indi­vid­u­als expe­ri­enc­ing a men­tal health cri­sis. It is my hope that improved train­ing and prepa­ra­tion will lead to few­er tragedies like that of Dontre Hamilton, a young man whose life was cut short after an offi­cer shot him mul­ti­ple times in a pub­lic park. Both Sheriff Clarke and I are well aware of his case. He was our constituent.

I’m not a fan of Sheriff Clarke or his pol­i­tics, but I do believe he could pro­vide a valu­able voice to this nation­al con­ver­sa­tion. Unfortunately, his appetite for the spot­light con­tin­ues to erode what lit­tle cred­i­bil­i­ty he has left, and his author­i­ty is fur­ther weak­ened under the weight of his own the­atrics. If the sher­iff tru­ly wants to help us, it’s time for him to prove that he’s more than just anoth­er par­ti­san agi­ta­tor with a badge and a cow­boy hat.

The self-pro­claimed “people’s sher­iff” needs to drop the sideshow act and get seri­ous. Until then, I can only won­der if Sheriff Clarke is still a law­man or just a guy who plays one on TV.
Fox News Favorite ‘People’s Sheriff’ Should Drop the Act