A good review of ex-Sheriff David Clarke’s terrible book

David Clarke

Milwaukee County’s authoritarian former sheriff and fake-badge cosplayer David Clarke has a book out, titled Cop Under Fire: Moving Beyond Hashtags of Race, Crime and Politics for a Better America, and you know it’s a flaming waste of paper just from the fact that fellow fascist Donald Trump loves it.

But don’t take my word for it. Here’s C.J. Ciaramella at Reason with a glorious, point-by-point takedown of Clarke’s raging, rambling ode to his own ego.

Normally it would be a waste of energy to give serious consideration to Clarke's scribblings. One might as well review a YouTube comment section. However, the man has captured the notoriously limited attention of our president, and Politico reports that he is likely to take a position in the Trump administration in the near future, all of which makes his ideas, such as they are, noteworthy.

Author Nancy French—who has worked on autobiographies with such luminaries as actress Stacey Dash, Bristol Palin, and The Bachelor's Sean Lowe—generously stokes Clarke's literary ambitions here. But even with French's steady hand at the tiller, this isn't as much a book as a series of things Clarke is likely to shout out a window at any given moment.

[…]

This sort of clownishness hangs about the book at all times, much like the giant cowboy hats and fake medals Clarke adorns himself with. He insists on referring to Black Lives Matter as "Black LIES Matter" (emphasis in the original) in every single instance, and calls Obama the "cop-hater-in-chief." He spends at least a quarter of his book quoting and arguing against Black Lives Matter, a "subversive, anarchist, hateful movement" that "doesn't care any more about the lives of black people than the Ku Klux Klan does."

The review lists some of Clarke’s greatest hits, such as how he killed an inmate by turning off his water for a week, how he forced a woman to give birth whilst shackled to a bed, and how another woman allegedly had a miscarriage in her cell as the guards ignored her. Strangely, none of those events and their resulting lawsuits made it into Clarke’s book. He did, however, find the space to mock an inmate for suing him over the quality of his jail food – specifically, rancid mush that landed him in the infirmary with chronic vomiting, bloody stools and an anal fissure. For some reason, Clark left out those details as well.

He does strike true on one point, though:

Clarke says the nation's current national security apparatus is nonsensical and prone to constitutional violations. Current security measures all Americans are subjected to at the airport by the TSA are a demeaning and useless charade.

Absolutely true! The US’s security theater is an expensive, civil-liberties-violating embarrassment that doesn’t even accomplish its stated goal of stopping threats at the gate. Its true purpose isn’t so much to ensure safety as to give the appearance of doing so.

Unfortunately, being right about one thing means Clarke’s stopped clock has to go back to being wrong:

Clarke recommends the creation of a new domestic spy agency "focused on protection, not prosecution," that would report directly to the president and wouldn't be burdened by the FBI's need to build cases. Suspected terrorists would be classified as enemy combatants, transferred to GITMO or similar camps, and tried by military tribunals.

[…]

Cop Under Fire is long passages of twaddle interrupted by the displeasing realization the author had authority over other human beings. Trump's continuing fascination with unreflective, unrepentant authoritarians like Clarke and Arpaio, and his hearty endorsement of this septic tank of a book, is as good reason as any to make sure Clarke is never near a position of power again.

At least there’s some slim good news on that front: Clarke might have been promised a sweet White House gig when he resigned, but it seems the thought of a proto-fascistic, power-abusing officer who let people suffer and die in his jail was a step to far for some, specifically Chief of Staff Gen. John Kelly, who purportedly blocked Clarke from landing a job anywhere near the West Wing. So Clarke’s now gone to work for a pro-Trump SuperPAC instead. Perhaps not exactly what he was hoping for, but if he ever gets bored, he could always turn his coworkers’ water off or serve them bloody-poop-inducing food in memory of the good ol’ days.

(via @pebonilla (RT: @Popehat) & Joe.My.God. (1, 2))