When the Marilyn Mosby-led prosecution of four Baltimore police officers became a fiasco, the Department of Justice stepped in to throw the howling mob a consolation prize, a 163-page report attacking the BPD’s practices as racially biased and unconstitutional. That report has now been answered in exactly the terms it deserves by Heather Mac Donald, author of the essential book, The War on Cops. The report, she explains, will victimize the very people it ostensibly seeks to help, by fostering crime with the shackles it places on cops. It is a mendacious narrative about policing that is contributing to an environment of virulent hatred against cops and that is obstinately blind to the realities of crime. As long as that narrative is dominant, more black lives will be lost, and probably also more blue ones. The real problem is that President Obama, the Justice Department, and most of the civil rights movement refuse to face reality and insist on fantasy: that crime and...(Read Full Post)