POLICE SHOULD STAY OUT OF POLITICS, DO THEIR JOBS, AND FIGHT REAL CRIME.

Summary: community residents should reasonably expect their public safety services to remain above the political fray.  Efforts to present any candidate as “law enforcement’s choice” for a particular public office represent an unacceptable politicization of the public safety function.  In Cathedral City, the embattled incumbent mayor and the other candidates running on her slate in this fall’s election have sought to present themselves as the implicit choice of Cathedral City’s public safety agencies, raising legitimate questions about the extent to which, should the incumbent mayor’s slate be victorious, our public safety agencies can be expected to remain impartial and resist the temptation to become political enforcers.

By: Paul S. Marchand.
In any community, residents should be able to entertain a reasonable expectation that their police and fire services will hold themselves outside political entanglement.  

As one local resident put it on Facebook, “Police should stay out of politics. The need to do their jobs and fight real crime.”

Unfortunately, as we saw when a group of so-called “Law Enforcement” representatives spoke out publicly against Congressional candidate Dr. Raul Ruiz, the citizenry’s expectations that our local law enforcement will avoid injecting itself into the vortex of political debate have largely been dashed.

Perhaps we should not be surprised.  A recent judicial retention election campaign presented to voters the unedifying spectacle of a challenger to one of our sitting judges unabashedly identifying himself as “law enforcement’s choice.”  In this blog, I was highly critical of such campaign tactics, which I felt reflected poorly on the best traditions of the Bench and Bar, and which tacked unacceptably close to the line that separates permissible campaign conduct from a serious breach of the canons of judicial ethics.

Yet, as citizens, we should still be able to entertain that reasonable expectation that our public safety services will not seek to inject themselves into politics.  I’ve read the unexpurgated Christopher Commission report produced in the wake of the Rodney King incident that rocked the LAPD to its foundations.  I also remember how, on the night the jury in the Rodney King trial came back with not guilty verdicts, then-LAPD chief Daryl Gates --whose disdain for then-Los Angeles Mayor Tom Bradley was plain for all to see-- was not at LAPD headquarters at Parker Center, but rather was attending a political fundraiser on LA’s Westside.  Such experience has caused me to take a somewhat dim, disapproving view of the politicization of the public safety function.

Here in Cathedral City, an embattled incumbent mayor wants to shoot the moon and take over our city government in its entirety by running a slate consisting of herself, her closest council ally, and Cathedral city’s former police chief.  As offputting as the blatancy and cynicism of the embattled incumbent mayor’s takeover bid may be to many residents of Cathedral City, it also offends because it pulls our public safety services into a political vortex.


Our mayor has a long history of confrontational behavior, and of seeking to cast any disagreement with her as somehow wrong or even criminal.  Can we expect that if the incumbent mayor and her slate are successful in their takeover bid that our public safety agencies will remain apolitical?  Or will those who dissent from the mayor’s viewpoint, or whom she considers enemies, find themselves targeted for investigation and/or prosecution?  Will their 911 calls me timely responded to?  Will our public safety agencies view their role as impartial enforcers of neutral laws of general application, or will they see themselves as the mayor’s muscle, foot soldiers of a political machine?

Given the often full contact nature of local politics here in the Coachella Valley, such questions are hardly unreasonable, given recent events, and they need to be answered.  This incumbent mayor has a long and unhappy track record to account for.  Do her slatemates wants to be held accountable for what they have not done?  Do they want to have to answer for her misdoings, outbursts and F-bombs?  Do they want to be responsible for that which they have not directed? 

Sadly, the mayor and her slatemates have furthered the promiscuous politicization of our police and fire services by creating an unjustified impression that the mayor and her slate somehow represent “law enforcement’s choice,” and that those who do not support the embattled mayor and her slate are not on the side of “law enforcement,” and are somehow rooting for the so-called criminal element.

Do our police and fire departments really want to find themselves subject the lascivious ogling of a political machine?

One would hope that the answer is “no.”

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Paul S. Marchand is an attorney who lives and works in Cathedral City, California, where he served two terms on the city council and is running to return to the Council after a two-year hiatus.  The views contained herein are his own, and not necessarily those of any entity or organization with which he is associated.  They are not intended to constitute, and should not be construed as constituting, legal advice.