Washblog

Every politician lives in fear of the Law Enforcement Lobby. Law Enforement never has to produce results and it can never be criticized. Law Enforcement are the uncriticizeable Brahmins of American politics.

So of course McKenna is going to deny racial bias in law enforcement. The most-brutal form of racial discrimination in law enforcement is the fact that law is not enforced in minority communities. Of course there are more black, latino and asian criminals in our jails.

A) They're easier to identify for lazy police.

B) Those communities have become a "Wild West" of criminal activity and law enforcement people just whine about it.

Back East, Italians have complained for decades that they have been over-targeted by the police and other law enforcement personnel. Some of those people really were legitimate businessmen, who really did feel undue pressure. Some were criminals trying to use community solidarity to shelter themselves from prosecution.

Criminals always try and use their communities, families and significant others to shelter them from prosecution. They're criminals. They're not going to be honest and responsible and they try and make everyone else around them dishonest and irresponsible. That's why crime has a pernicious influence.

The answer to the Mafia was for law enforcement to care enough about stopping crime that they did the work to penetrate social barriers and rooted out criminality in communities who had fallen prey to its influence. Rob McKenna is not going to ask that from Washington state's law enforcement community. McKenna is going to tell everyone what a good job they're doing and keep getting elected. He'll go to the Supreme Court to do it, if he has to because it's in his political interest to do so.

Meanwhile, law enforcement will become increasingly ineffective, increasingly militarized, increasingly politicized and increasingly corrupt and corrupting. But why should Rob McKenna care? He keeps getting elected, so what's the problem?