State Representative Ryan Clancy, one of two members of the legislature’s Socialist Caucus, is an espouser of the law enforcement-hating, defund the police movement.
The Milwaukee Democrat recently proclaimed that police officers’ jobs “have neither dignity nor value.”
Andrew Wagner, president of the Milwaukee Police Association, said Clancy (pictured above) should apologize for his “disgusting” remarks deriding law enforcement.
“I think he owes every officer an apology, and especially the families of our fallen officers,” Wagner told The Wisconsin Daily Star on the Vicki McKenna Show. “To say their life has no dignity or value I think is an absolutely horrific comment to make, especially from someone in leadership in the state.”
Clancy, who also serves on the Milwaukee County Board, made his original comments on a Facebook post.
“All work has dignity and value,” he wrote, followed with a footnote: “not cops, though,” as the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel reported.
“They may be perfectly fine individuals, but their jobs have neither dignity nor value,” he wrote in another comment.
Wisconsin Democrat State Assemblyman @RyanClancyWI, who is a member of the DSA and was arrested during the 2020 BLM riots, writes on Facebook that police officers "have neither dignity nor value." pic.twitter.com/mpfVVUnAxm
— Greg Price (@greg_price11) August 9, 2023
“Wisconsin Democrat State Assemblyman @RyanClancyWI, who is a member of the DSA [Democratic Socialists of America] and was arrested during the 2020 BLM riots, writes on Facebook that police officers ‘have neither dignity nor value,’ Greg Price wrote on his X account on August 9.
Wagner, whose union represents the approximately 1,600 sworn officers at the Milwaukee Police Department, said he would hope leaders, particularly in the Democratic Party, would condemn Clancy’s comments.
“Our officers, especially this summer, have been going through nightmarish situations where they’re working 12-to-16-hour shifts, canceling off days to make sure our festivals are covered … and everyone can have a safe time as they visit. And for him to say they have no dignity or value, that’s horrendous,” Wagner said.
There has been only silence from the left, including Governor Tony Evers. The liberal, on multiple occasions during the Black Lives Matter protests of 2020, maligned law enforcement in attempting to advance the Left’s so-called social justice agenda.
Three years ago this month, as parts of Kenosha were smashed, looted, and burned by anti-police rioters, law enforcement officials sent a letter to Evers and Mandela Barnes, his lieutenant governor at the time, criticizing their incendiary remarks. The officials asked Evers and Barnes to stop making comments about law enforcement that are “premature, judgmental, inflammatory and only add to the anger and divisiveness of an already dangerous situation.”
Clancy has doubled down on his rhetoric.
He told the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel that while criticizing law enforcement may be a political “third rail … we have a responsibility to have this conversation, and to do better because it’s, especially in Milwaukee, just a terrible drain on our economy.”
“Their profession is deeply rooted in systemic racism and classism, and there’s no 20-hour training course that will change that,” Clancy told the publication. “We really need to look at alternatives to policing in a serious way. And I think the most important of those is investing in our community in a way that reduces crime in a way that policing never, never can and never will.”
On Monday, Clancy falsely claimed to the left-leaning Wisconsin Examiner that police work is irredeemable because of its origins in slave catching. The publication reiterated Clancy’s false “systemic racism” claims insisting that modern policing “evolved from slave patrols established to enforce Black codes and, later, Jim Crow laws.
“It means that American policing has always been bad and it always will be,” the socialist told the liberal publication. “It’s not like we can get back to this to the early days… American policing… [is] epically racist and classist because that’s a dead end. That is the point of American policing.”
A poll conducted last September shows most Wisconsinites disagree with Clancy’s take on law enforcement.
The Wisconsin Professional Police Association poll, conducted by the St. Norbert College Strategic Research Institute, found 77 percent of the public approve of the way their local police force is handling its job. And 91 percent and a majority of both white and non-white residents agree that having a well-trained police force helps make communities a safer place in which to live.
To many, Clancy’s comments sound all the more tone-deaf in a year in which four Wisconsin law enforcement officers have been feloniously killed in the line of duty, including Milwaukee Police Officer Peter Jerving — shot and killed by a criminal on February 7.
Law enforcement officials told Fox News this year has seen the highest number of officers killed in felonious incidents since at least 1998. Assaults on police officers in Wisconsin have increased 42 percent over the past five years, Jim Palmer, executive director of the Wisconsin Professional Police Association, told Fox News Digital.
What would Wagner said to Clancy about his anti-police rhetoric? He said he’s praying for the lawmaker.
“I don’t understand his philosophy or his thinking, but I’ll pray for him to find guidance because criminals prey on victims and we need the police officers out there to stop the criminals,” the police union president said.
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M.D. Kittle is the National Political Editor for The Star News Network.
Photo “Ryan Clancy” by Ryan Clancy.
