As you know, Donald Trump has been elected the next president of the United States. Since President-Elect Trump was elected, I have been repeatedly asked by friends, family members, and even some media organizations, “Why do the police support Trump?”. Here is my answer to this from my personal views and those of my colleagues in law enforcement and other civilian police employees; this is not a political endorsement. It is meant to answer the question of ‘why the police support Trump.’ I should tell you that not all law enforcement. Not personnel supported Trump, but the vast majority of the beat officers, detectives, and others working the street overwhelmingly endorsed Donald Trump in this current election, and they did during his presidency in 2016. Not all police chiefs, superintendents or. Administrators feel the same way, but you can attribute much of that to political pressure from their elected boards.
Is President Trump perfect? Of course not, but who is?
Why do the hardworking beat officers throw? America’s support for Trump is easy to figure out and straightforward. President Trump supports, always has supported law enforcement, and he has done it in a public way. The beat officers feel that President Trump has their “back” and will not abandon them when pressure is put on by specific media organizations, activists, and those who want to either defund the police, reimagine policing, or do some social experiment that would obliterate the profession. I know that sounds a bit dramatic, but it is what I have been told by the officers to which I have spoken.
One of the specific items that the beat officers like about President Trump is that he will invest in hiring, retaining, and training police officers. He has also explicitly stated he will increase liability protections for American law enforcement. Trump has publicly supported the concept of stop and frisk; he supported strictly enforcing existing gun laws, cracking down on large drug-scale operations, and allowing local law enforcement to work with ICE to arrest and deport violent criminals.
President Trump also stated that he would direct the Department of Justice to do civil rights investigations against what he deemed to be radical leftist prosecutors’ offices. He specifically said that included Chicago. He will instruct the Department of Justice to dismantle gangs, street crews, and drug networks across America. He would also be in support of reinstituting the Chicago Police Department’s gang database, which was used not only by Chicago but every police agency in the state of Illinois who needed to track gang activity and criminals from Chicago that seep their way into the suburban jurisdictions. And as you know, President Trump has committed to securing our borders, which directly impacts police officers’ jobs. The number of undocumented immigrants that police agencies throughout the United States have arrested, had to deal with, or have violently attacked citizens and police officers is skyrocketing. Some of the Mexican and Guatemalan gangs that are crossing our borders have given directives to their gang members that they are granted permission to shoot and kill police officers. The Department of Homeland Security released this information to every police agency in the United States as a security warning to officers who work the street.
President Trump has also committed to directing his attorney general to prosecute those who attack police officers aggressively; this is a significant reason police organizations supported his election. No matter what side of the political spectrum you are on, I think you can appreciate a law-and-order president. This is the reason that police officers support President Trump in large numbers. They want their job to be safer, have someone with their back, and try to protect the officers protecting us. President Trump has been extremely public with his support of law enforcement, and in turn, police officers have supported President Trump.
I will say that many police chiefs, superintendents, and other chief executive officers in law enforcement do not feel the same way. I genuinely believe that some of this is just that chiefs are being directed by their politicians, who do not support Trump or his administration, and they are telling the police chiefs to stay out of it and not publicly support President Trump. And those police chiefs and superintendents who like their jobs follow the elected leaders’ request to “stay out of politics.” But as any chief knows, that is impossible. The police chief’s position is political, as you owe your job to politically elected leaders. Mayors, village presidents, and county boards are the ones that put the police chiefs in their position in the first place; to think that you do not have some politics in your job is just simply naïve.
The key is how to manage that while still leading from the front.
With what is going on in American Law Enforcement these days, a strong police leader is not only necessary but also mandatory. Police leaders need to stand up for their rank-and-file officers; in the end, police officers want someone in their corner, and it should start with the President of the United States, followed by the Police Chief.
About Tom Weitzel
Tom Weitzel retired from the Riverside, Illinois, Police Department in May of 2021 after 37 years in law enforcement and 13 years as Chief of Police. Opinions are his own. He can be reached at [email protected]. Follow him on X @chiefweitzel.
