Live from Music Row Wednesday morning on The Tennessee Star Report with Michael Patrick Leahy – broadcast on Nashville’s Talk Radio 98.3 and 1510 WLAC weekdays from 5:00 a.m. to 8:00 a.m. – Leahy was joined on the line by author and former Acting Director of ICE Tom Homan.
During the second hour, Homan checks the mayor of Seattle and chief of police and the unlawful order requesting that the chief abandon her precinct. He adds that all of this is designed to create chaos by the Democratic party so they can get rid of Donald Trump in the upcoming 2020 general election.
Leahy: We are joined now by our good friend. Fellow upstate New York native Tom Homan. The former acting director of ICE. Also the author of a great book called Defend the Border and Save Lives. Tom, good morning.
Homan: Good morning. Thanks for having me.
Leahy: Tom, when we were growing up in upstate New York, you grew up in Watertown. I grew up around Plattsburg. It was just normal life. You went to school. You learned about America. You learned about the differences between right and wrong. You learned how to read and write. Did you ever think that the country would become as crazy as it has become today?
Homan: No. It’s incredible. It’s like there’s an entire population inside the country that thinks there is no need for deterrence and if there are no consequences for bad behavior it usually doesn’t stop. That’s why the crazed leftists want to defund the police or abolish the police. Or re-imagine the police.
Leahy: Re-imagine the police! (Laughs) How does that look, Tom?
Homan: They want social workers to do the jobs of police officers. And you see that in Seattle. And shame on the mayor. And shame on the government for not taking action and not letting the police department take back their precinct.
I think sooner or later President Trump is going to go in and do something. We have to lead by example. We can’t let a bunch of people violate laws and not be held accountable for their actions. I hope the American people are paying attention. This is the difference between having law and order and not having no law and order.
Leahy: Tom, you have a strong law enforcement background. I want to raise this question to you and just see if you’ve thought about this. So, in Seattle, they begin this Capitol Hill Autonomous Zone that’s declared its independence from the United States of America. It’s about six or seven-blocks in downtown Seattle. It began when the mayor ordered the chief of police to abandon that precinct to these radical crowds. What do you think of that?
Homan: I think she’s an idiot. I mean, you cannot surrender law and order. Her number one responsibility as a mayor is to protect the citizens of that community. And you don’t do that by telling the police department to stand down and not take action which his exactly what she’s done. I cannot believe in this day and age the police would be ordered by a politician. Now she’s a politician, she’s not a law enforcement officer to abandon the precinct.
Leahy: Yes. I’ve wanted to ask somebody this for the past month. The police chief there, who’s a black woman. She seems like she’s got some common sense. But when the mayor ordered her to abandon that police precinct and give it up to these lawless autonomous zone creators, protesters, rioters. That police chief had a choice I think. And she chose to follow the order. Tom, was that the right choice for her to make at that time?
Homan: Absolutely not. She took her job and her concern for keeping her job and put that ahead of the oath of office she took. If that would have been me I would have resigned that very day. You cannot be ordered to ignore the law.
Leahy: So let me follow up on that. Had you been the Seattle Police Chief and you received that order, would that be called an unlawful order from the mayor or not? Is that a lawful order to abandon the precinct?
Homan: I think it’s an unlawful order for her to not enforce the law. If there are rioters and people out there committing crimes. Nobody is going to tell me to stand down. You heard it from the New York Police Department and other large police departments where they’ve been ordered to stand down.
The police association in New York City was blaming Mayor DeBlasio for being ordered to stand down. That’s a problem. Let me just take a shot at this. Mayor DeBlasio and these Democratic mayors, they want chaos. They want chaos. They think if they can show chaos it helps to defeat the president in the November elections.
That’s why the Democrats have come up with their own bill that will take the qualified immunity away from police officers which were established by the Supreme Court. They know they’ve got no chance in hell of making that work. Even if they do pass that legislation the Supreme Court will overrule it, but they want that talking point. This is about politics. Nancy and Chuck haven’t said a word about a violent protest. The first time they opened their mouth was when the president walked across the street to the church.
Leahy: That was the awful thing.
Homan: We should have been asking why we had to empty the park before he went across the street to access the church. That’s the question we should be asking ourselves.
Leahy: Back to what a police officer has to do. If the chief of police in Seattle had received and considered the mayor’s order to abandon the precinct in what’s now the autonomous zone, I guess there would be two options. One, to resign immediately, or the option would be to disobey the order. What would happen after that if they were to disobey what they considered an unlawful order and stayed in the precinct? What would have happened?
Homan: I think the police would have regained control of the area. I think the chief would have lost her job. It would have pulled out in litigation for years. The police chief could have left with her head held high knowing she kept the oath of office she took. And she protected the citizens, and not only the citizens, but the businesses in that area from looters that are being taken over by strong-armed radicals. All of that community. There is no section of the community that is off-limits to the police and it should never be.
Leahy: I think this is now the time for people to choose. A lot of folks and I think this police chief in Seattle made the wrong choice by bending to an illegal order and not making the stand. Not realizing, oh, this is an illegal order right now. I have a choice. I can either resign now or uphold the law and be fired in a week or two. That seems to me like the choice.
Homan: The police chief works at the pleasure of the mayor and the city council. You got to figure first of all, who’s the police chief? Why did this city hire this police chief? Why did the mayor and city council approve the hiring of this police chief? Because she must have been in the same political stratosphere as they are. Seattle is not going to hire a hardcore police chief to clean the city.
They are going to hire somebody to come in there and lean as far left as they can lean. I’ve seen numerous sheriffs across this country do the same thing who are career law enforcement officers and they decide to run for sheriff. All of a sudden they become sheriff and they stop cooperating with ICE. In my opinion, the day you make those decisions you stop being a cop you were for 30 years and you became a politician.
Leahy: Exactly. In Seattle and Nashville in effect, they are defying federal law in sanctuary city’s, right? They are not cooperating with ICE in the arrest of illegal aliens. They are resisting ICE. They’re going to be totally disobedient of that law but they are going to follow the unlawful orders of these nutcase mayors.
Homan: It all started with the first call to abolish ICE. Now abolish the police is just ridiculous. But Seattle, and the entire state of Washington. The cities in Washington and the cities in Oregon are some of the most left-leaning non-law enforcement people that we have in this country.
That’s just a fact. You can look at the policies and how they push back on law enforcement. Oregon police have been told numerous times to stand down when Antifa has torn the communities apart. Assaults take place right in front of the police and they are told to stand down by that Mayor Ted Wheeler. The state of Washington needs entirely new leadership.
Leahy: In our democratic constitutional republic, if the elected leaders do not respect the rule of law particularly in Washington state and Oregon state and other areas that are sort of left-leaning, what should law-abiding citizens in those states do?
Homan: You get to the voting booth and vote. And fight for control of your city and your state. You are right. You made the point that if politicians lead by example. It’s like we can look back to Nancy Pelosi after the president he was going to do a nationwide operation to arrest those that were ordered by a judge and didn’t leave. She went on national TV and saying that people didn’t need to open their doors. The Speaker of the House is teaching people how to evade the law.
Leahy: Yes. Evade the law. Thomas Homan, former ICE director and author of Defend the Border and Save Lives.
Listen to the full second hour here:
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Tune in weekdays from 5:00 – 8:00 am to the Tennessee Star Report with Michael Patrick Leahy on Talk Radio 98.3 FM WLAC 1510. Listen online at iHeart Radio.
