"We have entered an era of intense antipolice activism, led by the federal government in conjunction with agitators like Al Sharpton,” Heather Mac Donald claims in her book The War on Cops. Just how many times have we entered this era? Twelve years before Black Lives Matter came on the scene, Mac Donald delivered a lecture at the American Enterprise Institute titled “The War on Police.” Her 2003 book Are Cops Racist? was subtitled How the War Against the Police Harms Black Americans. Here we go again.
Mac Donald, who is based at the Manhattan Institute, is one of the right’s most prominent voices on crime and policing, writing often for the Wall Street Journal opinion page and testifying frequently on crime and homeland security. Though many on the right—George Will, Ross Douthat, even Newt Gingrich—are coming around to the idea that criminal justice reform is necessary, Mac Donald is resolutely not among them. “America does not have an incarceration problem; it has a crime problem,” she writes.
Continue: Reading: There Is No War on Cops
(In addition: Heather McDonald vs. Tim Lynch:Debate: There is a War On Cops that Makes Everyone Less Safe