Greg Kelly - Justice for All: How the Left Is Wrong About Law Enforcement

How the Left Is Wrong About Law Enforcement

Justice for All

Greg Kelly

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Copyright 2023 by Greg Kelly

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First Threshold Editions hardcover edition January 2023

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Interior design by Erika R. Genova

Jacket photograph by Chad Griffith

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data is available.

ISBN 978-1-6680-0202-5

ISBN 978-1-6680-0204-9 (ebook)

To my father, Raymond W. Kelly, the greatest police commissioner to ever live and serve

THIS IS A BOOK ABOUT justice in America and the consequences to our beautiful nation if justice fails. Trust in law enforcement and the institutions of public safety has been hollowed out. The center pole of the American way of life is freedom, but liberty must be paired with respect for the rule of law or else we will descend into chaos. Thats where America stands right nowat the edge of chaos.

Everyone feels itI know I do. Dont you? Divisions have emerged that could tear America apart. We fail to agree on fundamental matterssuch as: Are police bad? Is stealing harmless? Should white and black people be treated equally?and it doesnt seem that we are close to repairing the rift.

The core of the problem, as I see it, is that there is a hideously dishonest conversation about race going on in America today in order to avoid some uncomfortable truths. Im sick of listening to elected officials, media personalities, and radical advocates lie through their teeth about the reality of crime, criminal justice, and law enforcement in this country. The victims of this campaign of deep untruth include all of us, but it affects the men and women of law enforcement most grievously. They have been scapegoated, lied about, and savagely denigrated. Violence against cops is rising rapidly: the FBI says that murders of cops were up 59 percent during 2021, much higher than the figures for the nation at large.

Almost every year or two, typically corresponding to the election cycle, some incident involving a police officer and a civilianusually blackis amplified and magnified by the press, the national Democrat Party, and street-level activists to promote the idea that America is a racist dictatorship that feeds like a starving mosquito on the blood of African Americans. Civil unrest breaks outsometimes locally, sometimes nationallyto agitate the base and convince a segment of the electorate that one half of the country is ignorant, backward, cruel, and RACIST.

I lay the blame for this deeply false dynamic on Barack Obama. The senator from Illinois who consciously echoed Abraham Lincoln in his speeches, and who represented the promise of a postracial Americawhere people could get along normally and stop obsessing over skin colorturned out to be as wicked and divisive a race hustler as any street corner lunatic or Jim Crowera segregationist sheriff. He got elected president in 2008 on the premise of uniting America, and then set about lighting fires of resentment and discord everywhere he could, using ancient fears as leverage to grab as much power as he could.

I wrote this book to lay out the case against Barack Obama, his politics of division, and the Democrat Party, which he continues to lead behind the scenes, and in support of the men and women of law enforcement. They deserve better, and so does America. At its core, American institutions exist to preserve public safety, the rule of law, and peaceable enjoyment of the fruits of ones labors. Yet these institutions are teetering on collapse. People of good conscience must agree now to fight to shore up the timbers of the American system; otherwise it is all going to fall apart and get washed into the tides of history.

I was five years old when I first saw my father take his gun out and threaten to shoot someone.

We had gone as a family, including my brother, who was eight, and my mother, who was in her late twenties, studying to be a nurse, to Times Square Stores in January 1974. The store was in Hempstead, the town next to ours, Baldwin, on Long Island, New York.

My father, Raymond Kelly, was a sergeant in the New York City Police Department, and he would ultimately serve as the departments commissioner, the leader of the force, a position he held for fourteen years: a record in the history of New York City.

But on that winter night, Ray Kelly was just a foot soldier in the army he would later command. He worked undercover, which added mystery to the only vague idea I had about what he did. The shorthand was that he would go to work to catch bad guys. But he often wore a tie and coat to work. I didnt really know how he spent his time, or what work looked like.

I knew something about the police from television, but my father didnt wear a uniform when he went to work. He looked very much like the men on TV, but not on the cop shows. This was Bob Newhart making his way home from the office, or Tony Randall as Felix Unger neatly attired, running errands in the opening credits of The Odd Couple.

But catching bad guys wasnt so amiable. As I was about to learn.

It was supposed to be a quick trip to the store. My mother went inside to return my brothers birthday gift, a toy aircraft carrier. It had a rudimentary remote control by which a child could guide model F-4 Phantom jets onto the deck. But despite looking awesome in the commercial, the toy was a disappointment at home. In fact, it didnt work at all.

We were parked directly outside the store. My brother and I were wrestling in the back seat, making some kind of ruckus, but my father had gone to work: he noticed a man lingering by the door, outside. Standing outdoors was unusual enough on such a cold night. If he was waiting for a ride, it could have been done from inside. Also, he was watching everyone coming in or out closely.

I was oblivious, until an explosion of speed. Our car zoomed from 0 to 60, it seemed, in a half second. I went airborne, before slamming into the floor. Looking up, I saw my brother in his red puffy jacket, seat belt on, petrified.

This car, which had never done anything more than bring us to school or to the shopping center, was now careening with a roar over traffic islands.

What happened?!?!

Someone did something bad, my father said.

There it was. His work. Catching a bad guy. This is what he did. But this time, we were there.

The bad guy, the one my father had been watching by the department store entrance, had stolen a womans purse and was running away.