The following is a letter Chuck Rosenberg, acting head of the DEA, sent to his entire workforce in response to the remarks delivered by Donald Trump’s in Long Island last week.
The President, in remarks delivered yesterday in New York, condoned police misconduct regarding the treatment of individuals placed under arrest by law enforcement.
In writing to you, I seek to advance no political, partisan, or personal agenda.
Nor do I believe that a Special Agent or Task Force Officer of the DEA would mistreat a defendant. I know that you would not.
So, why do I write?
I write to offer a strong reaffirmation of the operating principles to which we, as law enforcement professionals, adhere.
I write because we have an obligation to speak out when something is wrong. That’s what law enforcement officers do. That’s what you do. We fix stuff. At least, we try.
Our Core Values are clear and applicable:
* Rule of Law
* Respect and Compassion
* Service
* Devotion
* Integrity
* Accountability
* Leadership and Courage
* Diversity
This is how we conduct ourselves. This is how we treat those whom we encounter in our work: victims, witnesses, subjects, and defendants. This is who we are.
I am incredibly grateful that you endeavor to live up to our Core Values, each day. It is not always easy, but it is always important.
We must earn and keep the public trust and continue to hold ourselves to the very highest standards. Ours is an honorable profession and, so, we will always act honorably.
Thank you for all that you do.
I am proud to be your colleague.
Chuck
If you missed our post on Trump’s remarks, you can find it below…
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This was a banner week for Donald Trump.
The distinct possibility that he will upstage himself next week doesn’t change the fact that the past five days will go down as one of the most bizarre, outlandish, and patently absurd stretches in the history of modern politics.
If you thought things were batshit crazy in Washington before, it turned out you hadn’t seen anything yet, because this week saw:
- Trump attempt to shame his own AG into resigning,
- a new communications director whose nickname is “The Mooch” calling known bigot and alt-Right godfather Steve Bannon a “cocksucker” in an angry phone call to The New Yorker,
- that very same “Mooch” calling Trump’s Chief of Staff Reince Priebus “a fucking paranoid schizophrenic,” in that very same angry phone call to The New Yorker,
- Reince Priebus resigning,
- “repeal and replace” crashing and burning for the umpteenth time,
- Trump banning transgender folks from the military via Twitter, apparently without actually getting consensus from the military itself.
And believe it or not, none of those spectacles came even close to being the most absurd thing to emanate from Trumplandia this week.
That dubious distinction goes to a speech the President gave at a Boy Scout national jamboree where, standing in front of thousands of Scouts, Trump called Washington a “cesspool”, bragged about his election victory, threatened to fire a staffer who was literally standing right beside him before insisting that the crowd pledge their loyalty to him, and in a truly shocking grand finale, basically demanded that everyone in attendance boo Barack Obama.
If you missed the Boy Scouts story, you can read it here and you can also read the group’s “sincere apology” for Trump’s behavior here.
But Trump wasn’t done.
Having been admonished by Michael Surbaugh, the Chief Scout Executive for the Boy Scouts of America, Trump flew to Long Island on Friday and said this in a speech to police:
Now as usual with Trump’s speeches, those comments are so comically absurd that one has to take a step back and realize that although what he said is fall-in-the-floor funny, it’s also terrible.
Just read this transcript and try not to laugh:
When you see these thugs being thrown into the back of a paddy wagon … you just see ’em thrown in, rough …
I said please. don’t. be. too. nice.
Like when you guys put somebody in the car and you’re protecting their head.
The way you put their hand over…
Like, don’t hit their head and they’ve just killed somebody and don’t hit their head.
I said you can take their hand away, ok?
Ummm.. “ok?”
To be fair, Trump isn’t “encouraging police brutality” as much as he is just talking out of his ass.
But regardless, it puts everybody involved in an exceptionally awkward position as evidenced by the fact that not only did the Suffolk County PD apologize for Trump…
… but so did the Gainesville PD (they even flat out said they “reject” the President’s remarks)…
…and in the final humiliation for the White House, the International Association of Chiefs of Police was out with this statement on Friday evening:
And so, in one week, Donald Trump managed to force both the Boy Scouts and the Police community to apologize for speeches he made.
How’s that for surreal?
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