National Police Association writer Steve Pomper investigates the vilification of law enforcement in his latest book, The Obama Gang, exposing the groundwork for last summer’s anti-police firestorm that was organized and executed by former President Barack O
National Police Association writer Steve Pomper investigates the vilification of law enforcement in his latest book, The Obama Gang, exposing the groundwork for last summer's anti-police firestorm that he says was organized and executed by former President Barack Obama's foundation.
In an exclusive interview with The Post Millennial, the retired Seattle police officer names the Obama Foundation's so-called "web of allies" who comprise the larger "organized crime family" or "gang" of elite individuals and radical organizations that operate across the country—yet remain on the periphery of civil society.
First is "The Boss." Much of Obama's public persona exudes an arrant "nice guy" exterior. "He seems like the kind of guy that you might find interesting to chat with at some coffee shop or pub. But he's baked in his anti-police ideology," Pomper voiced.
One of the headlining stories in Pomper's book is about Harvard University professor Henry Louis Gates Jr. who was arrested by Cambridge Police at his own Massachusetts home in 2009. Upon arrival home from overseas travel, Gates found the front door jammed shut and tried to force the entrance open. An eyewitness reported to authorities what looked like men breaking and entering the residence. Then police responded to the purported burglary in progress.
Although several facts of the case were still in dispute, Obama who admitted he’s personal friends with Gates did not hesitate to question "what role race played" when answering the final question of the live July 2009 press conference on health care.
However, the commander-in-chief did admit that he'd hope the police were called if he was implicated in the same scenario. "I guess this is my house now," Obama interjected, speaking of the White House. "Here, I'd get shot," he laughed at the hypothetical example. Obama then belabored what he characterized as America's "long history" of racial profiling. "That doesn't lessen the incredible progress we've made. I'm standing here as testimony to that. And yet the fact of the matter is it still haunts us," Obama added.
"He injected racism into the situation where there was no evidence. There's still today is no evidence that any racism occurred," Pomper rebutted.
Law enforcement had disputed the extent of the scholar's cooperation, recalling that Gates, who was booked for disorderly conduct, didn't provide identification when asked at first and then proceeded to berate the police. Cambridge Police Sgt. Joseph Crowley, the responding cop, said he was called "racist" by the black academic.
Gates alleged that he was harassed for being an African American man, ABC News reported. As the confrontation escalated, Crowley was joined by an additional Hispanic Cambridge police officer and black sergeant, according to two high-ranking law enforcement officials who have been briefed on the Gates case and Cambridge police reports.
Then in 2014 during Obama’s second term, 18-year-old Michael Brown was shot dead by white Ferguson Police officer Darren Wilson in Missouri. The altercation ensued when Brown attacked Wilson for control of the cop's gun until the weapon was fired.
Wilson testified that he acted in self-defense. Obama's own Department of Justice conducted an investigation into the fatal shooting. One year later, the federal probe cleared Wilson of civil rights violations, concluding that forensic evidence and credible witnesses corroborated Wilson's account. "There is no evidence upon which prosecutors can rely to disprove Wilson's stated subjective belief that he feared for his safety," the Justice Department announced, confirming reports that Brown raised his hands in surrender were "inaccurate."
"They wanted to find something on the officer and they just couldn't," Pomper observed. The facts did not support the filing of criminal charges against Wilson, he summarized. Then at the Benedict College town meeting not long after, Obama clarified that the DOJ's finding was "not unreasonable to determine that there was not sufficient evidence to charge Officer Wilson."
Stating that Wilson "benefits from due process" and the reasonable doubt standard, Obama declared: "We may never know exactly what happened.” To which, Pomper questioned: "What do you mean, 'We'll never know what happened there'? Do you trust your DOJ or not? It's his DOJ. That's absolutely anti-police, because at what point do you give the benefit of the doubt to the officer even after your own DOJ is clear about that?"
Just last year, Obama’s eulogy delivered at the funeral for Rep. John Lewis politicized the somber event. Obama seized the opportunity at the late congressman’s service to liken riot-control tactics employed by President Donald Trump’s administration to those used by segregationist Southern leaders who fought the civil rights movement in the 1960s.
.@BarackObama sowed more division at the #JohnLewisMemorial
He likened police to Bull Connor & Trump to George Wallace
"sending agents to use tear gas and batons against peaceful demonstrators."
He is a disgrace pic.twitter.com/1WdbkzuTqi
— Jim Hanson ?? (@JimHansonDC)
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Trump had sent federal officers to protect the federal courthouse in Portland overtaken by violent Antifa agitators whom Obama had dubbed "peaceful demonstrators." Protests are legal and constitutional, Pomper differentiated. "However, police officers don't use force against protesters. They use force against rioters," Pomper drew the distinction. "We know that's what's happening from what we saw. Instead, he chose to exacerbate the situation."
"I think that those three examples show [Obama's] bias against police officers. And of course, there's all those consent decrees in place to kind of quasi-federalize local police departments," Pomper concluded.
The Underboss
Leftist mega-donor George "The Underboss" Soros spreads power through money. The financier has funneled cash into local elections to advance soft-on-crime district attorneys across the finish line. The Soros-style fundraising strategy covers both coasts. Soros spent $2.7 million in California alone, the Los Angeles Times reported in 2018. The years-long campaign surmounted more than $16 million in 17 county races in other states.
"You've got him funding prosecutors all over the United States—not just in big cities, also in smaller towns and counties—affecting how the criminal justice system acts or doesn't act all across the nation," Pomper said.
A philanthropic group founded by the billionaire investor in July 2020 pledged $220 million to "dismantle systemic racism." Among the recipients of the massive investment from Open Society Foundations included established forces "fighting for an end to policing." $70 million was earmarked to move "beyond the culture of criminalization and incarceration."
Soros heads an overt consortium of private backers and organizations that splinter and spawn other entities with satellite associates that aren’t even attached to the brain child, Pomper said.
Capos
Through what's called the My Brother's Keeper Alliance (MBK Alliance) pledge—an initiative of the Obama Foundation as of late 2017—the 44th president directed city leaders, the "caporegime," in June 2020 to "reimagine policing," Pomper explained. (The Obama Foundation positions the MBK Alliance as an adage turned-national network that "focuses on building safe and supportive communities" for black adolescents.)
Five years ago today, @BarackObama announced the My Brother’s Keeper initiative to expand opportunities for boys and young men of color. Read his reflections on the work of @MBK_Alliance and the young leaders he met at #MBKRising last week: https://t.co/uPujyVHetX pic.twitter.com/YQ0tRKMQYa
— The Obama Foundation (@ObamaFoundation)
On June 3, 2020, Obama issued the pledge at an event hosted by MBKA Alliance and broadcasted live on major media outlets. The virtual town hall that reached over 2.7 million online viewers, titled "Reimagining Policing in the Wake of Continued Police Violence," took place eight days into the widespread destruction that the Obama Foundation claims "affirmed, educated, and reminded the world about the ongoing fight for civil rights."
"As far as I could see, it's all Democratic mayors," remarked Pomper. "And it's nationwide. It's everywhere and includes everyone you would think it would."
More than 300 jurisdictions across 43 states have since taken the pledge to overhaul use-of-force policies to "combat systemic racism within law enforcement," including all of the 10 most populous cities in the United States, the Obama Foundation cites.
The pledge has four elements: review, engage, report findings within 90 days, and commit to reform. "There's nothing about if they find something wrong with policies, they'll reform them. Straight out, they're going to reform them," Pomper stated.
"And there's one thing missing: they don't talk to the police," Pomper revealed. "It's a presumption of guilt. They just go ahead and push their agenda on the people."
Pomper reiterated that police are not included in the conversation. "We're supposed to have this contract between the police and the public: they send us to training, we train the best we can, and then we serve the public with that training, having taken an oath and having gone through the battery of tests to be able to get into the profession," Pomper explained. "We kind of expect our communities to give us the benefit of the doubt. And now there's absolutely no benefit of the doubt for police officers. There's only liabilities now and really no benefits."
As part of "ongoing learning," mayors were instructed to attend an initial five-session workshop series. Cities that took the pledge were also mandated to track "progress," surveilled by the MBK Alliance through collected testimonies and media monitoring. Of the 335 pledged cities, 39 submitted progress updates after multiple requests.
Meeting the challenge by @BarackObama to all mayors, this morning I signed the 4-part pledge from the My Brother’s Keeper Alliance to review @MNPDNashville’s use-of-force policies and commit to any necessary reforms.
I invite all Tennessee mayors to join me in taking the pledge
— Mayor John Cooper (@JohnCooper4Nash)
The first workshop in August 2020—"Police Accountability and Reforms"—tasked cities to enact "cultural change" by untangling America's almost "single track reliance" on police. The workshop’s panel argued that the public is demanding accountability for the "fear, pain, loss of life, and damage that over-policing causes."
The self-admitted objective is to "reduce the footprint of policing," according to the "Community-Centered Innovations in Public Safety" session joined by the Black Lives Matter Global Network co-founder. Panelists from the "Insights from Black Law Enforcement Leaders on the Future of Policing'' workshop prompted mayors to "[a]cknowledge that law enforcement in the United States was designed to maintain oppression and white supremacy."
The pledge also pressures policymakers to slash municipal spending on necessary police force funding. For example, the city of Springfield in western Massachusetts has reallocated $125,000 from the police department budget to fund the new Racial Equity office under the Office of Health and Human Services. The Obama Foundation presses mayors to adopt "a human services lens for public safety" by throwing resources at alternative emergency responses to intervention scenarios that would be "better handled" by "trained well-being service provider[s]."
"It almost seems like the 'mafia omertà' where they're pledging allegiance to the boss," Pomper said, describing the Italian code of honor that places importance on silence, non-cooperation with authorities, and non-interference with the illegal activities of others.
A police union in Upper Darby, Pennsylvania, had inspired Pomper’s project when an armored vehicle was removed from the township to "demilitarize" the police department, one of the political left's terms used to condemn law enforcement, the Delaware County Daily Times reported.
Pomper emphasized that Upper Darby Mayor Barbarann Keffer, a Democrat, had signed the My Brother’s Keeper Alliance pledge two months prior and was part of the Obama-led promise.
"The tank sort of symbolizes an overmilitarized police department," Keffer told reporters, stressing that her administration is working to "modernize" the township's police.
The 130-member Upper Darby Police Department had acquired the SWAT tank through the 1033 program of the National Defense Authorization Act, which allows the federal Department of Defense to distribute excess equipment to local authorities at little or no cost.
Just the week before, the vehicle in question was used during Tropical Storm Isais, the category 1 hurricane that ravaged the northeast mid-summer 2020. The tank rescued 22 residents in one day, drove one person to the hospital, and saved lives throughout the natural emergency.
Soldiers
Street-level "soldiers," who have set fires, vandalized small businesses, harassed residential neighborhoods, and assaulted federal agents throughout much of 2020, land on the bottom of The Obama Gang's organizational chart. Pomper illustrated the leftist propaganda being fed to those on-the-ground militants who are convinced that conservatives are "fascists."
"They've just taken this label and decided: 'Okay we're gonna rebrand and redefine these folks as fascist. We're gonna call ourselves anti-fascist,' which is the most ironic name in the world," Pomper said. He then highlighted the association between Antifa insurgents and the Black Lives Matter movement that's aligned with Marxist ideology. The end game is to upend society. To achieve this anarchist goal, radicals must weaken law and order, Pomper stated—thus, "defund" or "abolish" police in America.
Pomper recounted how back in the early days of organizing for socialism, the movement focused on the working class. Now laborers have drifted over to the conservative side. "They've decided to inject race into everything. By doing that, they're able to make the police racist as well as conservatives, libertarians, and anyone who doesn't follow [the left's] monoculture."
The mainstream media reported on the wave of riots ignited in the aftermath of George Floyd's death last year as an entirely spontaneous response. However, the civil unrest was not some kind of grassroots uprising, Pomper countered. "They wait for incidents like this to happen, so they can ride the wave," he commented, referencing the "anomaly" that occurred in Minneapolis.
Portland Mayor Ted Wheeler—whose apartment complex was set ablaze by Antifa operatives—had ordered police to stop using tear gas under all circumstances after 100-plus days of consecutive riots in the Rose City. Wheeler, the city’s police commissioner, sympathized with "Defund the Police" rioters and ended one summer night bathed in tear gas. "Tear Gas Ted" was shouted and shoved out of the protest community, yet the progressive mayor called the "urban warfare" deployed by federal officers "an egregious overreaction."
People have surrounded the mayor, cursing him and calling for resignation. pic.twitter.com/o0s1azbi2R
— Mike Baker (@ByMikeBaker)
"[Anti-police activists] are doing their best to take away any tools from Portland Police to be able to quell these riots," Pomper stated. "You've got prosecutors that won't prosecute. Then you've got officers that aren't allowed to use the best means to control crowds. It's making the job impossible."
Pomper detailed his personal experience policing in the Pacific Northwest, which had bled into the retired cop's writing. The Justice Department's civil rights division had launched an investigation into the Seattle Police Department while Pomper was still active. The 2011 report alleged that SPD officers used force in an "unconstitutional manner" almost 20% of the time.
A statistician who once worked at the Bureau of Justice Statistics, the statistical research arm under the Justice Department, debunked the report that "highlighted two empirical findings that stretch credibility beyond its limits" and was "trying to force the city to institute reforms without [the] DOJ revealing the methods that produced its findings."
"The Department of Justice investigation of the Seattle Police Department was launched over concerns about eroding public trust and confidence in the Seattle police, but I am far more concerned about whether [the] DOJ deserves our trust and confidence," penned Seattle University criminal justice professor Matthew Hickman for the Seattle Times.
In the article, Hickman urged the city of Seattle to call the Justice Department’s bluff, which would "not stand up to legal or scientific scrutiny," and settle for nothing less than apology for the unwarranted political division. Pomper pointed out that the current mayor of Seattle served as the U.S. Attorney for the Western District of Washington at the time whose office had co-administered the joint investigation; Mayor Jenny Durkan was appointed to the chief federal law enforcement position by Obama.
"There's all these multifaceted attacks. The non-random nature of this well-funded, far-reaching anti-police machine is directed by the former president and this major political party," Pomper said. "Of course, for most of the media, Obama's off limits."
The Obama Gang, available on paperback via Amazon, ships starting April 14. Pomper’s work is published by the National Police Association, a 501(c)3 nonprofit that exists to educate, assist, and advocate for local police departments.