Serving the High Plains
Serving the High Plains
As of Friday, Albuquerque, without even having to ask, was supposed to get “help” from about 25 federal law enforcement officials in combating its admittedly major crime problem.
Albuquerque is the largest city in the state I happen to live in, so I feel that, like my roughly 2 million fellow New Mexicans, I have a stake in this situation.
While I do not fear a storm-trooper invasion like the one imposed on Portland, Oregon, I still feel President Donald Trump has directed an unwanted and unneeded intrusion on state and local authority.
Trump’s offer of unsolicited assistance to Albuquerque and other large cities would be more credible if all the targeted cities did not happen to have Democratic mayors. It would be more credible if more large cities with Democratic mayors had reported more trouble with recent unrest over George Floyd’s homicide than those with Republican mayors, like San Diego and Miami.
The degree of unrest in large cities seemed to correlate more with size — the bigger the city, the greater the unrest — than politics. The largest cities happen to have Democratic mayors today, but the affiliation of their mayors has changed regularly over the years.
Trump’s federal officer deployment would also be much more believable if city and state officials had actually asked for the help, or if it was coordinated with elected state and local officials. There was federal, state and local coordination when federal troops were sent to the Detroit riots of 1967 and the Rodney King riots in Los Angeles in 1992.
Most presidents in Trump’s situation would have gathered officials from all levels to develop a mutually agreed-upon strategy to combat rioting and high crime rates. That would have been an example of federalism, a favorite idea of small-government conservatives, not a one-sided move like Trump’s, which is reminiscent of dictators past and present. Federalism divides authority between central and local officials and pushes that authority down where possible.
In Albuquerque, I have yet to see who is going to be in charge.
If it’s the feds, I think the locals will resist. If it’s the locals, I would think the feds will be sent to get coffee or pick up pizza.
Albuquerque Police Chief Mike Geier said he will welcome added expertise. Federal training is superb, and expert outside perspective would contribute greatly. I would hope both he and whoever is in charge of the invading federal force show that kind of super-maturity.
Even with that kind of cooperation, I still feel like my state is about to undergo an unwelcome federal invasion, the kind that Republicans were told they should fear from President Barack Obama.
Whether motivated by Trump’s ignorance and personal ambition, which is what I suspect, or a genuine desire to increase federal authority, this one-sided forcing of assistance where it is unnecessary and unwanted should be more frightening than unrest that is now under control.
Steve Hansen writes for Clovis Media Inc. Contact him at: