by Michael P. Tremoglie
During a May 10 House Judiciary Committee hearing about crime, Rep. Madeleine Dean (D-PA-4) laughably portrayed herself as a champion of the forces of law and order. She sought to position herself as the protector of the innocent victims of crime.
What a pathetic charade conducted by Madeleine Dean. She is the paradigm of the liberal academic from a homogeneous White upper middle-class Philadelphia suburb. Totally removed from the tragedies, destruction, and suffering caused by crime – especially in the inner city – she knows nothing about policing. When her workday is done she retreats to her suburban sanctuary away from the hoi polloi she purports to represent.
Dean’s radically Left, anti-police, soft-on-crime beliefs are there for all the world to see despite her duplicitousness and obfuscation. Consider her most recent actions:
The Judiciary Committee passed a resolution expressing support for local law enforcement officers and condemning efforts to defund or dismantle local law enforcement agencies. Dean voted no!
But Dean supports the thin blue line – except when her Marxist friends want them eliminated.
Dean voted no against HR 2494, a law passed by House Republicans to make the assault of a law enforcement officer a deportable offense.
But Dean is a staunch supporter of police – except when illegal immigrants assault them.
She voted to maintain the D.C. Council’s soft-on-crime law. This law was so pro-criminal, so anti-police that 14 Democrats joined Republicans to repeal the law. The leader of her Democratic Party, President Joe Biden, approved of the Republicans’ effort to repeal it.
This law was so bad that D.C. Mayor Muriel Bowser, a Democrat, vetoed this law. D.C. Police Union Chairman Gregg Pemberton was quoted as saying that the bill was “dangerous” because it “destroys collective bargaining rights of MPD police officers, eviscerates due process, reduces less-lethal options for law enforcement during a riot, and further contributes to the critical staffing crisis that is plaguing the Metropolitan Police Department (MPD) today.” DC’s Police Chief Contee also opposed this law.
The bill, which would have taken effect in 2025, reduced penalties and stripped away maximum sentencing requirements for some crimes while giving misdemeanor defendants the right to a jury trial. Fortunately, the House repealed the law – with 14 Democrats voting with Republicans. The Senate also repealed the law with six Democrats and two Independents joining Republicans in voting against the law.
But Madeleine Dean wraps herself in police blue – when she supports the criminals.
Dean was an original co-sponsor of a police “reform” act that among other things made it easier to prosecute police and eliminated qualified immunity for law enforcement.
But Madeleine wants to stop crime and help crime victims – by making cops criminals and crime victims insignificant.
What else could you expect from Dean? After all, she is a devoted member of the Democrats in the House of Representatives. These same Democrats, we must all remember, have five members of the Democratic Socialists of America. They are: Rashida Tlaib (Michigan), Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (New York), Jamaal Bowman (New York), Cori Bush (Missouri), and Greg Casar (Texas).
If you do not know, you should know what their criminal justice agenda is. They tell us all the time. The Democratic Socialists of America have a plan for the criminal justice system. Here it is (emphasis not in the original):
- Defund the police by rejecting any expansion to police budgets or scope of enforcement while cutting budgets annually towards [sic] zero
- End the criminalization of working-class survival
- Freedom for all incarcerated people
- Demilitarize the police and end colonial policing of our cities and neighborhoods
- Freedom of working-class self-organization and democratic political action
- Invest in community self-governance and care, not police officers
Does anybody believe this is a formula for anything other than continuing the skyrocketing crime rates that currently plague America? Of course not, but this does not matter to Dean.
During the April 17 House Judiciary Field Hearing on crime in New York City, Dean imperiously silenced a crime victim who objected to the lecture Dean was giving the crime victims. Things were so bad that one of the crime victim witnesses – disgusted with the Democrats’ disdain for them – chastised all the Democrats.
Another witness, Jennifer Harrison, was quoted as saying some of the Democratic members of the committee were falling asleep while witnesses attempted to tell their stories. “It was extremely disrespectful, it was defeating, it was disheartening.” She added that she had been waiting 18 years for lawmakers to take her concerns seriously.
How ironic since Madeleine Dean lectured Republicans about not being serious about the issue of crime. Maybe she should save her lectures for her fellow Democrats and Democratic Socialists.
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Michael Tremoglie is a writer and former Philadelphia police officer with a master’s degree in criminal justice from Saint Joseph’s University.
Photo “Rep. Madeline Dean” by Rep. Madeline Dean.
