Rashida Tlaib has taken it too far.
The second-term congresswoman from Detroit and charter member of the “squad” has a well-earned reputation among conservatives for running off at the mouth in the service of the leftist agenda, but her call last week to end policing in the country entirely is getting criticism from much closer to home.
And it’s coming from a voice Tlaib should find hard to ignore.
In an interview Sunday with WJBK-TV, the Fox affiliate in the Detroit area, Detroit Police Chief James Craig made it clear he would not be sorry to see Tlaib take a permanent leave of absence from a congressional position.
“I’d love to see her resign. I’d throw her a goodbye party,” Craig told interviewer Charlie Langton, an attorney and WJBK anchor.
“Let her go. Who is she speaking for, Charlie? Let me just say this, when you talk about abolishing police, and incarceration, and you talk about safe cities — what do you think the residents in Detroit want? I know, I speak with them.”
Check it out here:
Tlaib’s comments, Craig said, are “reckless.”
“So, is she truly representing the people? Or is she representing a fringe group?” he asked.
Craig was referring to comments Tlaib made last week, after the apparently accidental shooting of Daunte Wright, a motorist with an active warrant who resisted arrest in the Minneapolis suburb of Brooklyn Center on April 11.
Tlaib published a Twitter post declaring that the shooting showed policing in the United States is hopelessly corrupt.
It wasn’t an accident. Policing in our country is inherently & intentionally racist.
Daunte Wright was met with aggression & violence. I am done with those who condone government funded murder.
No more policing, incarceration, and militarization. It can’t be reformed.
— Rashida Tlaib (@RashidaTlaib) April 12, 2021
From any sane American the remark would be ludicrous. Coming from a woman in a position to craft laws — and one whose workplace is under constant, armed protection — it’s almost criminal.
And James, a lifetime law enforcement officer, obviously has no time for a crime.
On CNN’s “New Day” on Monday, he repeated his charge that Tlaib’s comments were “reckless.”
Then, after disparaging Democratic Rep. Maxine Waters’ remarks over the weekend that protesters should be even more “confrontational,” Craig hit the nail on the head.
Tlaib’s comments, he said, were intended to do one thing more than anything else:
“This is about her putting attention to herself,” he said. “That’s exactly what it’s designed to do.
“It’s not productive. She doesn’t speak for the majority of Detroiters. The majority of Detroiters support this police department. They want effective and constitutional policing.
“And to make statements like, ‘abolish policing,’ ‘abolish incarceration,’ certainly is counterproductive.’”
Rep. Rashida Tlaib “doesn’t speak for the majority of Detroiters. The majority of Detroiters support this police department. They want effective and constitutional policing,” says Detroit Police Chief James Craig about the Michigan congresswoman.https://t.co/f9JY9DiUfu pic.twitter.com/CaU9OvVcjx
— New Day (@NewDay) April 19, 2021
When CNN’s John Berman read a statement from Tlaib that he said “tried to clarify” her position, Craig wasn’t buying it.
While he agreed with some comments Tlaib made regarding mental health and social services, he cut right to the chase.
“What she’s doing now is, she’s pedaling back because she got so much pushback from her reckless comments,” he said. “So it doesn’t surprise me that she’s now trying to take a softer approach.”
Craig and Tlaib have locked horns before.
In 2019, the then-freshman congresswoman infuriated Craig with her criticisms of the Detroit PD’s use of facial recognition software to identify potential suspects in criminal cases. Tlaib even went so far as to tell Craig the department should only hire African-Americans to use the software, because, she said, “I think non-African-Americans think African-Americans all look the same.”
(It’s worth noting that Tlaib herself is the daughter of two Palestinian immigrants. As a “non-African-American” woman, does she think all black people look alike?)
The decidedly black Chief Craig disagreed, noting the training of his department’s employees was more important than their skin color.
“I trust people who are trained, regardless of race, regardless of gender,” he told Tlaib. “It’s about the training.”
Imagine that. An American police chief putting his faith in individual human beings — with proper training — to perform the job they are paid to do without regard to race, treating individuals based on their merits, rather than some imaginary inherited characteristics.
Sounds almost like the career of law enforcement itself.
Unfortunately, in the United States of 2021, that’s the opposite of what a career in politics looks like.
Democrats like Tlaib — and her squadmates, Reps. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez of New York, Ilhan Omar of Minnesota and Ayanna Pressley of Massachusetts — focus their attention almost entirely on skin color and class divisions in an effort to consolidate progressive power.
Since the tragic death of accused counterfeiter George Floyd after a Minneapolis police officer knelt on his neck in May, Democrats have called for “reforming” or “defunding” police departments to the advantage of criminals (as the experience of Minneapolis has shown).
Now, backpedaling or no backpedaling, Tlaib used the tragic death of another man to call for the abolition of policing and incarceration in general.
That was taking it too far, and Police Chief James Craig let Tlaib — and the country — know it.
This article appeared originally on The Western Journal.
