November 13 , 2013 - WND.com
© Jack Cashill

The racial grievance industry, with the White House’s blessing, has a plan afoot to up the relative percentage of whites and Hispanics in America’s prisons by keeping young black men out.

This week Broward County Public Schools in Florida reached an agreement with the NAACP and local law enforcement to end what is sometimes called the “school-to-prison” pipeline.

These entities will end the pipeline not by addressing the social dysfunction that leads to crime but by refusing to put students in the pipeline until they commit their fifth criminal misdemeanor.

You read that right, fifth. For the first four incidents, “administrators are instructed to try and resolve the situation without an arrest” through counseling and other such nostrums.

"Everybody deserves a second chance,” said local NAACP honcho Marsha Ellison. "And all students will be treated equally no matter what the color of their skin."

Despite the NAACP’s happy talk of a color-blind program, its very involvement suggests these programs are not.

Broward officials had to look no further than the Trayvon Martin case at neighboring Miami-Dade County Public Schools to see how racist and counter-productive these programs typically are.

Just days after being suspended for marijuana posssssion, Martin was allowed to wander the Retreat at Twin Lakes in Sanford, Florida, high and alone, looking, in George Zimmerman’s immortal words, “like he’s up to no good or he’s on drugs or something.”

Martin was on drugs and, as Zimmerman learned the hard way, he was up to no good. His school district’s benevolence cost Martin his life.

The Miami-Dade Schools Police Department (M-DSPD) has more than 150 sworn personnel and, as the Martin case would reveal, problems unique to its peculiar mission.

Through its diligent exploitation of the Freedom of Information Act, the ConservativeTreehouse was uniquely able to discover why the M-DSPD allowed Martin to skate.

The exposure of the department’s practices began with the Miami Herald story on Martin’s multiple suspensions from school.

The article prompted M-DSPD Chief Charles Hurley to launch a major Internal Affairs (IA) investigation into the possible leak of this information to the Herald.

As the investigation began, the officers realized immediately that they had a problem on their hands. “Oh, God, oh, my God, oh, God,” one major reportedly said when first looking at Martin’s data.

He could see that Martin had been suspended three times already that school year, twice for offenses that should have gotten him arrested. In each case, however, the case file on Martin was fudged to make the crime less serious than it was.

From the officers’ statements, made under oath, it appears that Hurley instructed them to divert offending juveniles away from the criminal justice system and back to their respective schools for discipline.

As one detective told IA, the arrest statistics coming out of Martin’s school, Dr. Michael M. Krop Senior High School, had been “quite high,” and the detectives “needed to find some way to lower the stats.”

At least a few officers confirmed that Hurley was particularly concerned with the arrest rates of black males in the Miami-Dade system. 

In a letter obtained by NBC 6 of South Florida, a senior detective wrote, "[Hurley] asked that I reduce the number of arrests I affect of all black juveniles. I told him regardless of the race of an individual; if probable cause existed for an arrest that individual would be arrested. He was not happy with my response to his request."

When asked by IA whether the M-DSPD was avoiding making arrests, another high-ranking detective replied, “What Chief Hurley said on the record is that he commends the officer for using his discretion.”

“What Chief Hurley really meant is that he’s commended the officer for falsifying a police report.”

In a purely statistical sense, Hurley’s policies were working. On Feb. 15, 2012, eleven days before Martin’s death, the Miami-Dade County Public Schools put out a press release boasting of a 60 percent decline in school-based arrests. Broward is already boasting of a 41 percent decline.

“We are making tremendous progress in moving toward a pure prevention model,” Hurley told the Tampa Bay Times, “with enforcement as a last resort and an emphasis on education.”

In truth, however, the only “education” a diverted student like Martin was getting was to be sent home—or wherever—on an unmonitored suspension.

As a result, his parents seemed genuinely oblivious of the kind of trouble he had been stumbling into. Nor was there any “prevention.” With their previous crimes winked at, students felt empowered to commit more.

Martin’s apprehension with stolen women’s jewelry and a burglary tool months before his death should have been a wake-up call for everyone in his life. It was not.

Given the directives from the top, one officer chose not to link Martin directly to the jewelry. He instead wrote a report about “found items” and traced those items to Martin only through the police report number.

There was no further investigation. As far as Trayvon’s father, Tracy Martin, knew, his son had wandered into an “unauthorized area” and been suspended. No big deal. Boys will be boys.

In Hurley’s defense, school districts across the country had been feeling pressure to think twice before disciplining black students.

In July 2012, the Obama administration formalized the pressure with an executive order warning school districts to avoid “methods that result in disparate use of disciplinary tools.”

The White House headlined the press release announcing this dubious stroke of reverse racism, “ President Obama Signs New Initiative to Improve Educational Outcomes for African Americans.”

Jesse Jackson brought this nonsense home to Sanford, Florida, during a large April 1 rally. He implied that Martin would not have been killed if he had not been suspended from school, suspensions being just another form of “profiling.”

In a way, Jackson was right. Martin should not have been suspended. He should have been arrested on both occasions.

Had he been, his parents and his teachers would have known how desperately far he had gone astray. Instead, Martin was “diverted” into nothing but an early grave.

Who is Jack Cashill?