It’s about time.
Those were my first thoughts when I saw Boston Commissioner William Gross tear into the ACLU this weekend after another ridiculous lawsuit they levied on his community.
Calling them “paper warriors”, Gross took to his Facebook page after his agency was sued over the gang database.
That system, the ACLU claims, targets, labels and investigates a disproportionate amount of black and brown students who may not belong to a gang.
It’s a tired lawsuit where the ACLU goes into cities across America, takes their arrest, gang and stop data and if the demographics don’t match the census population exact, here comes the lawsuit.
To say that crime and those that are victimized should fall exactly as the population of a given city is is shortsighted, ridiculous and falls outside common sense.
Most cities and police chiefs take it and they stay silent, letting the officers suffer the consequences of being labeled racists when they simply respond to crime.
But not Commissioner Gross and for that he should be applauded.
“No ACLU present when we have to explain to a mother that her son or daughter was horribly murdered by gang violence,” Gross wrote.
“No ACLU when officers are shot. No ACLU when we help citizens,” he added. “Despite the paper warriors, we’ll continue to do our jobs.”
“I sure as hell didn’t see the ACLU in El Salvador working to find a solution to our youth being inducted into the MS-13 gang …,” he wrote, saying he did travel to MS-13’s homeland and “took a hell of a risk while doing so.”
MS-13 has been wreaking havoc in Boston with violent killings in Eastie, robberies, extortion, drug dealing and racketeering — with 49 gang members recently convicted, many of them facing life in prison.
Gross said he “didn’t see” the ACLU back police or 22 youth programs working together to curb the gang’s “atrocities.”
Gross also knocked the lawyers’ group for not having the “common decency” to call with condolences after a city cop was shot in the face.
Officer John Moynihan was shot point-blank in the cheek by a convicted felon in March 2015 during a traffic stop in Roxbury. After remaining in critical condition, Moynihan made a miraculous recovery. The felon was killed that day by other officers.
“I sure as hell saw a member of the ACLU in the background taking pictures as a certain group tried to crash through the crime scene three hours later,” Gross said of that day.
“No ACLU when officers are shot. No ACLU when we help,” he added in his post. “But always hiding and waiting for a slow news day to justify their existence.”
Gross is not alone and he should know there will be consequences for going after the keyboard warriors but I’m betting he doesn’t care and his leadership is not only courageous but should be admired and copied by others.
Unfortunately it won’t be.
Too many Chiefs and Mayors run scared when the ACLU comes to their city. Milwaukee paid over 3 million dollars when the ACLU sued them and after attacking the ACLU, Milwaukee Chief Flynn found himself unemployed. While his retirement reportedly had nothing to do with the ACLU, it certainly came in a contemporaneous fashion and at the time, Flynn was right just as Gross is now.
On behalf of law enforcement, I thank them for standing up to a bunch of bullies that should be paying attention to true atrocities rather than cops trying to stop violence in the communities that they serve.
The post It Is About Time…. appeared first on Law Officer.