Image Credit: Shelby County DA Steve Mulroy / Facebook & Canva
Tennessee Conservative News [By Olivia Lupia] –
Liberal Shelby County District Attorney Steve Mulroy is facing sharp critique from other DAs, law enforcement officials, and lawmakers after he wrote an op-ed for USA Today over the weekend disparaging police use-of-force training and claiming officers are “trained to kill”.
Mulroy’s piece, titled “Your local police may be trained for violence. They shouldn’t be,” details his experience at a weeklong use-of-force training for law enforcement by Force Science, a private company specializing in research, training, and consulting for force science hired by many law enforcement agencies across the country. But instead of highlighting any constructive or enlightening information he may have received, Mulroy instead claimed his experience was the total opposite.
“As DA, I often have to make decisions about whether to prosecute police in officer-involved killings. So I could better evaluate those cases, I wanted to get educated firsthand on what kind of training law enforcement officers receive,” he wrote. “One thing I learned was a DA can’t prevent police killings if the police are trained to kill. I went in expecting a fairly neutral discussion of the law, with a series of practical dos and dont’s, with illustrative examples of when force was and was not appropriate. I got nothing of the kind.”
The piece went on to further disparage the course, including instructors’ comments on de-escalation and the rising risk of violence to officers from civilians, yet acknowledged that of the number of people killed or seriously injured by police each year, “the vast majority of such incidents are justified,” though adding that “each incident erodes public trust in police.”
“Good training can reduce the need for police use of force, increasing safety for the officers, the suspects and the wider community. My own experience with the training, sadly, did not give me confidence,” the article concludes.
These comments, amongst other sentiments in the piece, have sparked heated criticism from those engaged in the law enforcement arena, including from Mark Davidson, President of the Tennessee District Attorneys Conference Executive Committee and DA of Tennessee’s 25th Judicial District, who issued a statement on behalf of eight current and former DAs across the state.
In emphasizing that Mulroy spoke only on his own behalf and not for the state’s other elected DAs, Davidson wrote, “This is not the first time [Mulroy] has chosen to speak for himself. He has mused about the benefits of a diversion program for convicted felons illegally possessing firearms, made agreements in lawsuits to further his own ideology at the expense of the other thirty-one districts, and routinely taken positions that do not reflect the thoughts or beliefs of his fellow elected prosecutors. We have remained silent. We will no longer.”
Davidson also said that Mulroy’s implication that prosecutors who don’t file charges in officer-involved shootings are enabling the idea that officers using deadly force are just excused “is inaccurate, irresponsible, and unfair to prosecutors across Tennessee who make these difficult decisions every year. [Mulroy’s] words are reckless.”
Collierville Police Chief Dale Lane offered his own pushback through an open letter expressing his disappointment in Mulroy’s evaluation of national police training based on a single class and a “handful of controversial cases”, saying the article left readers with “the false impression that deadly force is a regular occurrence.”
“There is a vast difference between analyzing a crisis from the safety of a desk and experiencing it in real time. Investigators and critics have months to evaluate a file, while officers have mere fractions of a second to make split-second, life-altering decisions,” Land wrote. “I hope District Attorney Mulroy will reconsider his stance and work alongside us to support the overwhelming majority of dedicated public servants in our region.”
And State Senator Brent Taylor, who has been advocating for better oversight and accountability of Mulroy’s office for years, fired back on social media, writing in part, “Tennessee’s only Soros-backed district attorney cares more about coddling cop-killers than working with law enforcement to fight crime. It’s clear from his op-ed that he is itching to prosecute a cop. D.A. Mulroy is a danger to President Trump’s progress on fighting crime in Memphis, and Mulroy’s lack of focus on prosecuting criminals is a danger to law-abiding citizens in West Tennessee.”
Mulroy responded to the criticism, saying, “The proper response to the opinion piece should be deep concern about this dangerous training, which has been given to law enforcement officers throughout Tennessee and the country, and not to shoot the messenger…That training, and not stirring up intra-DA squabbling, should be our focus. To see my piece as criticism of other DAs or law enforcement generally, you’d have to either completely misread it or willfully mischaracterize it. Since I respect my DA colleagues’ honesty, I’m going with Theory A.”
About the Author: Olivia Lupia is a political refugee from Colorado who now calls Tennessee home. A proud follower of Christ, she views all political happenings through a Biblical lens and aims to utilize her knowledge and experience to educate and equip others. Olivia is an outspoken conservative who has run for local office, managed campaigns, and been highly involved with state & local GOPs, state legislatures, and other grassroots organizations and movements. Olivia can be reached at olivia@tennesseeconservativenews.com.
One Response
Lucifer’s accursed Soros funded dimmercrap puke NEEDS a HARD public flogging.