President-elect Donald Trump continues to build a cadre of like-minded persons for his administration, individuals whose words, actions and agendas suggest they could prove detrimental to the Black community. This time, it is Milwaukee County Sheriff David Clarke Jr., whose name has been floated as a potential Trump pick to head the Department of Homeland Security.
Milwaukee Sheriff David Clarke gets on an elevator after arriving at Trump Tower, Monday, Nov. 28, 2016, in New York. (AP Photo/Evan Vucci)
The African-American, cowboy-hat-wearing law officer and Trump campaign surrogate is infamous for his tough-on-crime stance and his unchecked, often unabashedly extreme statements that have made him a darling among conservative media and right-wing groups.
“Sheriff Clarke has gotten out of hand, and he’s been out of hand for quite some time…. He is really starting to piss me off,” Milwaukee County Supervisor Supreme Moore Omokunde — son of U.S. Rep. Gwen Moore (D-Wis.) — told the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel back in November 2015.
Moore Omokunde’s comments were prompted by opinions Clarke voiced on his podcast, “The People’s Sheriff,” which is aired on Glenn Beck’s TheBlaze radio network. The four-term sheriff was criticizing an opinion piece in The New York Times concerning police shootings, in which a Harvard professor said some poor Blacks often turned to the drug trade because of a lack of jobs.
“Let me tell you why Blacks sell drugs and involve themselves in criminal behavior instead of a more socially acceptable lifestyle — because they’re uneducated, they’re lazy, and they’re morally bankrupt,” Clarke said. “That’s why.”
The Black conservative has made equally disparaging statements about other communities and groups, chiefly the Black Lives Matter movement, which he has dubbed “Black Lies Matter.”
The nationwide grassroots movement grew out of the seemingly unending trail of dead, unarmed African Americans killed by police and trigger-happy gun owners, notably the slaying of 17-year-old Trayvon Martin in February 2012 by a former neighborhood watch volunteer.
However, Clarke, a regular Fox News contributor, denies that police brutality even exists and constantly rails about the supposed “war on police.”
“There is no police brutality in America. We ended that back in the ‘60s,” Clarke said on the Oct. 26, 2015 edition of Fox News’ “Fox & Friends.” He added, “You look at the data and the research, and there’s a new Harvard study out that shows that there is no racism in the hearts of police officers. They go about their daily duty, if you will, to keep communities safe.”
The self-proclaimed “People’s Sheriff” has called Black Lives Matter “garbage,” and a “subversive movement advocate the overthrow of our legally constituted government,” and he has denigrated President Obama for acknowledging the grievances underlying the protests.
Clarke has also compared BLM to ISIS and suggested it would team up with the terrorist group. And, he also blamed the group for the summer shooting of Dallas police officers and called protestors “sub-human creeps” whose behavior was “primitive.”
Ironically, though Clarke decried protests that arose after police killings, in an October 2016 tweet he told his 405,000 followers that it was “pitchforks and torches time,” urging them to rise up against institutions of government and “big media.”
Under a Clarke leadership, Homeland Security will likely treat Black Lives Matter activists like “enemy combatants” if previews of his upcoming memoir, Cop Under Fire: Moving Beyond Hashtags of Race, Crime and Politics for a Better America are to be believed. Clarke suggests he would overhaul homeland security by bringing the war on terror to U.S. soil, including treating American citizens suspected of being terrorists as “enemy combatants” subject to arrest, non-legal representation and indefinite detention, according to the Journal Sentinel which reviewed an advance copy of the tome. Those suspected terrorists would be tried in military tribunals and not regular court.
“We are at war. Homegrown radicalization has the enemy inside our borders,” Clarke wrote as cited by the newspaper. “Islamist radicalized Americans are not criminals; they are enemy combatants.”
In a December 2015 episode of his podcast, Clarke went even further, suggesting that Americans who express pro-terrorist sentiments on social media—about a million persons, he estimated—should be arrested, deprived of constitutional protections and shipped to an offshore prison.
“I suggest that our commander in chief ought to utilize Article I, Section 9 and take all of these individuals that are suspected, these ones on the internet spewing jihadi rhetoric…to scoop them up, charge them with treason and, under habeas corpus, detain them indefinitely at Gitmo,” Clarke said. “We’re at war. This is a time of war. Bold and aggressive action is needed.”
Equally troubling as Clarke’s incendiary positions and dubious associations, some detractors say, are the questionable deaths that have happened in the past year at the Milwaukee County Jail under Clarke’s watch. The jail, which houses about 950 inmates per day, saw the death of Terrill Thomas, 38, in April due to “profound dehydration” in what has been deemed a “homicide,” the Journal Sentinel reported. In July, a newborn died after an inmate gave birth in her cell without jail staff noticing. Another inmate died in August after staff failed to assess the known heroin addict after her arrest and put her on preventative detoxification protocol. Another 29-year-old man died in October; the cause of death has not been released.
Brian Peterson, Milwaukee County chief medical examiner, said that after his office disclosed information about two of the cases to the public, Sheriff Clarke called him on Oct. 28 and “verbally pummeled” and “threatened” him.
“Sheriff Clarke’s attitude was hostile, his mood was angry, and my attempts to mollify him were rudely rebuffed,” Peterson wrote in his 1,231-word e-mail to his bosses, the Journal Sentinel reported, further noting that Clarke is known for losing his temper on the job.
Clarke began his near-40- year career in law enforcement in 1978 with the Milwaukee Police Department, where he served for 24 years. In November 2002, he was elected to his first four-year term as sheriff of Milwaukee County.
The Milwaukee native Clarke graduated summa cum laude from Concordia University Wisconsin with a degree in criminal justice management. In In September 2013, Clarke obtained his master’s degree in security studies from the U.S. Naval Postgraduate School, Center for Homeland Defense and Security, in Monterey, Calif. His thesis analyzed the need to balance domestic intelligence operations with protection of privacy and civil liberties.
