WASHINGTON – Pima County Sheriff Mark Napier pushed back against claims that white supremacists have infiltrated law enforcement agencies, telling a House committee Tuesday that he has “simply not been exposed” to any evidence of that.
Napier said that while “bad actors” may slip through, police share community outrage at the actions of what he insisted are “a very, very few members of law enforcement.” But the perpetuation of the narrative of racist police agencies, meanwhile, has made it difficult to attract the minority officers who could diversify the force, Napier said.
His comments came during the latest in a series of House Oversight Committee hearings titled “Confronting Violent White Supremacy” – a problem Democrats on the committee said can be seen in the spate of police violence against Black and Latino victims.
“The bloody trail of violent white supremacy is now splattered across America,” said Rep. Jamie Raskin, D-Md., chairman of the Subcommittee on Civil Rights and Civil Liberties. Raskin went on to say that the “virus of white supremacy is spreading.”
But the few Republicans who attended the subcommittee hearing cautioned against generalizations that create “broad and false narratives about the police.”
“When we, the institution of Congress, make blanket statements using viral videos to define a class of human beings standing on that wall for us every day, I’m troubled by that,” said Rep. Chip Roy, R-Texas.
Democrats pointed repeatedly to a 2006 FBI report that warned of the threat of white supremacists infiltrating police departments – a report the agency has since disavowed as “an irrelevant and outdated document.” Raskin said the FBI was invited to send a representative to the hearing, but declined to do so.
But most of the witnesses at the hearing said the threat is very real. Frank Meeink, who identifies himself as a former white supremacist, recalled being encouraged to join the police force “as a means to cause harm to people of color,” with group leaders sharing ways to get around the screening process.
“The fact that many of these neo-Nazis became cops means there is something not right with the screening process in law enforcement, and I believe it is possible to fix,” Meeink said.
Democrats argued that police can still perpetuate racist behavior even if they do not identify as members of racist groups, saying the issue is deep-rooted within the system.
“We have known for generations that it’s not a question of whether this problem is an issue,” said Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, D-N.Y. “It’s a matter of how we have allowed it to sustain for so long.”
Heather Taylor, president of Ethical Society of Police in St. Louis, said this racial divide is not allowing police to do their job properly and that something needs to be done to address the internal problems within law enforcement.
Napier said his officers go through a “rigorous hiring and training process,” that includes sensitivity and racial-bias training, but Taylor said more needs to be done.
“I believe more extensive background checks are necessary when hiring,” Taylor said. “Anyone saying you can train away racism, they’re wrong. You need to weed it out, you need to fire them.”
Rep. James Comer, R-Ky., said one solution is to increase minority representation within law enforcement, especially within districts where the majority of residents are people of color. He called on Democrats to ease up on its dialogue.
Napier echoed Comer’s sentiment, saying he has struggled to hire new officers in the face of the “current, national rhetoric.”
“The execution and ambush of law enforcement officers has a very disquieting and chilling effect on law enforcement officers and the ability to recruit these young people,” Napier said.ÿ
But Rep. Rashida Tlaib, D-Mich., pointed to an incident in November in Napier’s department, when a Pima County officer was videotaped pinning a Black quadruple amputee to the ground, according to news reports.
“The system is broken and I know you do not want to face the fact,” said Tlaib, who added that the office in that case was not charged.
But Napier said he immediately put that officer on leave and turned the case over to the county attorney, who declined to bring charges. And he doubled down on his defense of his profession.
“I have simply not been exposed to any evidence that would lead me to reasonably believe that systemic racism and infiltration of white supremacy into the profession – which I’ve dedicated nearly four decades of my life to – is present in modern-day law enforcement,” Napier said.
This article appears in Sep 24-30, 2020.
The only racist people in people out there are the ones who have declared war on our police. Why attacking one has not become a hate crime, I’ll never know.
Not to mention, this falls into the usual accusations demorats make that they are doing themselves about someone else. Its called deflect.
Wow paul! You’re confused beyond belief. I’m not sure where to start.
While the Tucson police force has a good reputation, there are many that surely have been infiltrated. It has been a publicly stated goal by many white supremacist and right wing radical groups since the 90’s.
Friends, racism, discrimination and socioeconomic inequality exists in this country. There is no denying this. These things have no place in our country (period). I do not believe there is systemic racism infiltrating law enforcement. Systemic is an important word. I see no evidence of that. Even the vast majority of democrats readily admit the majority of law enforcement officers are good people. We need to weed out the bad apples. They have no place in our profession and do not represent who we really are. Thanks. Sheriff Napier
By definition, racism and white supremacy are structural and yes, systemic. The whole “bad actors” argument is a pathetic dodge. Sure, racists actively embrace and promote racism, and white supremacists actively embrace and support white supremacy, but the concepts and the problems they cause are bigger than individual people. They have their own momentum and will continue until we as a nation get serious about stopping them.
No objective person can look at the overtly racist way in which law enforcement plays out in the U.S. and deny that. The numbers don’t lie. There is an obvious and dramatic racial skew in the statistics of who gets surveilled, who gets pulled over, who gets arrested, who gets convicted, who gets the worst sentences, who goes to jail, and yes, who gets killed and injured by police violence–and THERE ALWAYS HAS BEEN. These totally racist results persist even though there is NO racial skew in actual criminal activity.
We cannot have an honest conversation about police reform in this country without beginning with that FACT. When I see defensive cops denying that fact, well, I don’t have much hope that they’re committed to reform in any meaningful way.
Police forces draw racists BECAUSE THEY ARE SYSTEMICALLY RACIST (as they always have been). White supremacy is not a person or an act–it is a culture. It is the unwritten, unspoken law of our land. It is the water we all swim in, and unless you’re naming it and actively opposing it, you are perpetuating it.
It funny how the demorats are quick to shout racism when it was they who started the white sheet gang, it was they who did not want people of color.
In 1857, the Supreme Court, with seven of the nine justices being Democrats, decided that Dred Scott, a black slave, was not a citizen but property.
After the Civil War, when Republicans enacted the 13th Amendment abolishing slavery in America, southern Democrats reacted by creating the vicious anti-black Jim Crow laws.
In 1866, Republican Rep. Thaddeus Stevens introduced legislation to give former slaves “40 acres and a mule,” but Democrats opposed it.