Fox News reporter Paul Steinhauser recently touted the endorsement of Democratic presidential nominee Kamala Harris by Police Leaders for Community Safety, describing it as a “leading national law enforcement group” on par with the Fraternal Order of Police (FOP), the International Union of Police Associations (IUPA), and the National Association of Police Organizations (NAPO), all of which have endorsed former President Donald J. Trump.
However, while the FOP, IUPA, and NAPO are many decades old and represent hundreds of thousands of police officers, Police Leaders for Community Safety is a mere “advocacy organization” that has only existed since June.
Steinhauser, who previously reported for the far-left Daily Beast and served as CNN‘s political editor, claims that Police Leaders for Community Safety is a “major law enforcement group” and accepts its description of itself as “nonpartisan.” However, it appears to exist exclusively to promote leftist policies and politicians.
The Fox report produced a cavalcade of fake news reporting on the subject, including this local New Jersey paper’s article falsely claiming the recently-created group “normally backs Trump.”
Leading member Cynthia Herriott, who resigned as Interim Acting Police Chief in Rochester, New York, in 2021 after one scandal-ridden year, said in June that gun control would be the group’s main focus, alongside issues such as “accessibility of elections”—generally code for Democratic priorities such as fewer identity checks on voters and greater use of insecure voting methods such as mail-in ballots.
Vice President Kamala Harris’s lack of support among genuine police groups is unsurprising, as she previously compared police to slavers and backed the violent Black Lives Matter (BLM) protests and associated initiatives to defund police forces in 2020.
Harris also solicited donations for groups paying the bail of those taking part in BLM riots, in which multiple serving and retired police officers were killed or seriously injured.