Andy Craig: Gwen Moore Fails to Offer Serious Criminal Justice Reform

via Andy Craig for Congress:

Rep. Gwen Moore (WI-4, Milwaukee) writes recently that Sheriff David Clarke fails to offer substantive solutions to the problems of crime, poverty, and law enforcement accountability in Milwaukee. In particular, Moore objects to Clarke’s self-appointed role as purveyor of conservative talking points in the national media.

I agree that Clarke’s record on accountability and criminal justice reform is far from impressive. It is true that much of his political activity seems driven more by self-promotion as a conservative pundit or potential candidate for higher office than by serious proposals to fix Milwaukee’s problems. However, Clarke is hardly alone among Milwaukee’s political class in that regard.

The Milwaukee County Sheriff’s Office has fairly limited responsibilities in a county with no unincorporated areas and where some services, like security on the county bus system, are heavily outsourced to private firms. It is the Milwaukee Police Department that is the provider of the city’s general law enforcement services, and most of its law enforcement scandals. These repeated scandals are driven in no small part by bad federal laws which Gwen Moore has failed to oppose and overseen by Democratic politicians that she has never failed to support.

MPD answers not to Sheriff Clarke but to Chief Flynn and Mayor Barrett, a Moore-endorsed loyal Democrat. While Clarke’s advocacy of armed self-defense (which she incorrectly calls “vigilantism”) offends her, it was Chief Flynn whose foray into gun control politics consisted of ordering his officers to deliberately violate the state’s handgun laws, as if Milwaukee had somehow ceased to be part of Wisconsin. This while MPD officers were found to be shooting Milwaukee’s canines at the rate of one per week over a decade, covering up failures in the department’s data storage system, and deliberately misreporting violent crime statistics to create the appearance of a decline. It was also an MPD officer who shot Dontre Hamilton, just one in a long litany of dubious use-of-force incidents. None of these are problems that can be conveniently blamed on Sheriff Clarke’s habit of appearing on Fox News.

In her position, unlike Sheriff Clarke, Rep. Moore has the power to vote against federal programs and grants which push failed war-on-drugs arrest-driven policies. She could oppose federally funded militarization of state and local law enforcement. She could speak out against federal funding for the vast increase in dangerous and confrontational SWAT-style execution of routine search warrants. She could call for the repeal of the vast expansion of federal criminal law which has made potential felons of us all, reform of the notorious civil asset forfeiture system, and the end of federal prohibition of marijuana. She has not done any of those things, and her pointed refusal to do so makes her more regressive on all of these topics than a comfortable super-majority of her constituents.

Instead of fixing the problems Congress has created and contributed to, Moore touts another band-aid solution, in the form of an ineffectual federal grant program targeted at the narrowest problems of the most recent headline-generating incident. While lamenting the lack of accountability, Moore voted to mandate the empowerment of police unions nation-wide, which serious advocates of reform have correctly noted as being their most entrenched and powerful opponents. Such unqualified support of the same special interests which advocate strenuously against any accountability, even in the most extreme and egregious cases of abuse, is impossible to square with her calls for a serious discussion on how we can move forward to improve police-community relations.

Nor can the direct responsibility of Congress for federal law enforcement be overlooked. Moore has voted against increased oversight of the ATF and in favor of expanding its authority. She has not joined the bipartisan calls to abolish this rogue agency, and has even protested against Congressional efforts to investigate and punish misconduct at the ATF and Department of Justice, all while ostensibly lamenting the ATF’s notorious criminal misconduct here in Milwaukee.

Gwen Moore complains that Sheriff Clarke, in his position, could serve as a leader in the fight for criminal justice reform and is instead squandering that opportunity on petty politics. The same can be said of Gwen Moore. After a decade in Congress, she has had the opportunity. She has been protected in this negligence, by a Republican Party beholden to its own wrongheaded talking points, and which is consigned to not seriously contesting an urban district where the national GOP is (well-deservedly) as popular as the plague.

In 2016, voters in the 4th District should have the opportunity to reject hollow grandstanding and soundbite-driven politics from both left and right. As a candidate of Wisconsin’s rapidly-growing third party, the Libertarian Party, I will challenge Gwen Moore to defend and justify her record on criminal justice reform. Not just in comparison to conservatives who refuse to seriously engage the topic, but in contrast to real, substantive civil liberties and criminal justice reform. These ideas and concerns have gone unrepresented in Congress, and unheard in our two-party debate, for far too long.

Andy Craig
Libertarian for U.S. House of Representatives (WI-4)
Milwaukee, Wisconsin