Acquittal of Baltimore cop in Freddie Gray case hailed at GOP convention
CLEVELAND — Tales of death and mayhem, decline and fiery grief opened the first night of a surprisingly downbeat Republican National Convention. An African-American Wisconsin sheriff who has been a vocal critic of the Black Lives Matter movement was greeted as something of a folk hero and praised the acquittal of a police officer charged in the Freddie Gray case in Baltimore.
“Ladies and gentlemen, I would like to make something very clear: Blue lives matter in America!” Milwaukee County Sheriff David Clarke opened his speech at the convention, to thunderous applause and chants of “Blue Lives Matter.”
“I stand before you tonight with a heavy heart, as the law enforcement community prepares to bury three of Baton Rouge, La.’s finest,” he said. “But there is some good news out of Baltimore, Md., as Lt. Brian Rice was acquitted on all charges in the malicious prosecution of activist state’s attorney Marilyn Mosby.”
Clarke’s remarks come at a time of heightened concern about domestic unrest and international terrorism. The nation is still reeling from the recent mayhem in Orlando, Fla., and Nice, France, as well as from the attacks on police officers in Dallas and Baton Rouge. Clarke voiced such concerns last year, explicitly predicting in October that the movement against police violence, Black Lives Matter, would eventually merge with the so-called Islamic State terrorists and pose a threat to the United States.
“Before long, Black Lives Matter will join forces with ISIS to [bring] down our legal constituted republic. You heard it first here,” he tweeted then. Since then, he has called the movement “garbage” and described it as a “subversive movement” working to “overthrow the government.” He updated those remarks the night before the Cleveland convention in a CNN appearance widely praised on right-wing blogs, warning: “This anti-cop sentiment from this hateful ideology called Black Lives Matter has fueled this rage against the American police officer. I predicted this two years ago.”
Convention-goers’ familiarity with his opinions boosted the applause for Clarke during his introduction, on a night devoted to the theme “Making America Safe Again.”
“We simply cannot be great if we do not feel safe in our homes, on our streets, and in our communities,” he continued. “I see this every day at street level, where many Americans increasingly have an uneasiness about the ability of their families to live safely in these troubling times. This transcends race, religion, ethnicity, gender, age, and lifestyle. … Sadly for a growing number of communities, the sense of safety that many of us once took for granted has been shattered.”
The shattering of that sense of security, he said, can be traced back to the disorder that has attended the upsurge in protests in recent years. “What we witnessed in Ferguson, in Baltimore, and in Baton Rouge was a collapse of social order. So many of the actions of the Occupy movement and Black Lives Matter transcend peaceful protest, and violate the code of conduct we rely on,” Clarke said.
“American law enforcement officers understand that race is and has been a heated issue in our country. Most appreciate the vital need for thoroughness and transparency in pursuit of the greater good in their actions, and in their investigations,” he continued. “These are truths that are self-evident to me, and which I practice, and they are the truths that Donald Trump understands and supports.”
