You want police transparency? You got it with Comey

Despite his high station, when it comes right down to it, FBI Director James Comey is just another cop.

In fact, Comey is the nation's top cop. With that, come some pretty serious responsibilities. I don't always agree with Comey, but, just as I do with every cop across America, I avoid second-guessing him because, well, nobody has a right to gaze through the fish-eyed lens of hindsight and say what they would have done. In order to maintain some level of intellectual integrity, I have to afford the same level of deference to every law enforcement officer, from beat cop to top cop.

That's why I didn't pile-on when Director Comey announced in July that his agency would not be pursuing charges against Hillary Clinton for her use of a private email server while secretary of state. And that's why I'm aghast that the same folks who reveled and rejoiced in that announcement are now feigning righteous indignation in the wake of Comey's announcement Friday that additional Clinton emails had surfaced in a separate investigation and the new development could result in the re-opening of the criminal investigation against Clinton.

"Gasp!" said the far-left of American politics.

What did the people in high places roiled by the announcement expect Comey to do? They expected him – and they actually said this with a straight face – to uphold the lauded, long-standing tradition in American politics of concealing the existence of criminal probes from the American people when they come within 60 days of a presidential election.

What the …

These are the same people, remember, who have demanded that police be more transparent in the post-Ferguson era. Not that those politicians and their allies who engage in anti-police hate speech really care about police transparency. It is meant to be yet another nebulous, insatiable criticism of law enforcement employed by those politicians who think that pandering to Black Lives Matter and dismantling the American criminal justice system somehow curries the favor of black voters.

It doesn't.

It's never been tougher to be one of the men in blue than it is right now. Get Roorda's "The War On Police: How the Ferguson Effect Is Making America Unsafe" now at the WND Superstore

Black Lives Matter has become a fringe organization that only speaks to the fringe of the American electorate. It is a group that has fomented anti-police violence at demonstrations, protests and riots where catchy chants like, "What do we want? Dead cops. When do we want them? Now," are all the rage.

They do not speak for mainstream African-American voters who still – even after all of the hullabaloo in Ferguson, Baltimore and elsewhere – consistently list combating violent crime in their neighborhoods as their No. 1 issue in polls and surveys. Most black people – just like most white people – enthusiastically support the crime-fighting mission of law enforcement. The politicians who think that BLM speaks for all blacks are engaged in a precarious game of self-deception that has left law and order in our country in tatters. Nobody suffers more because of this misguided political pandering than black people, who are disproportionately the victims of violent crime in America and who are dying in record numbers due to this contrived neo-reformism.

But, again, what do BLM and the political elite who are the architects of an anti-police perestroika expect cops, particularly Comey, to do after two and a half years of demanding a new era of glasnost from law enforcement? Here's your glasnost, comrade: If you want openness, you got it – even when it's politically uncomfortable for you. So, put that in your tруба and smoke it.

This is the new world order you created, cop haters. It's one where every police shooting, every arrest, every investigation, every action taken by police is supposed to be as transparent as the proverbial glass house from Chaucer's "Troilus and Criseyde."

You can't have it both ways. If you – or the candidate you support – wants to live in the White House, and the election strategy on the road to Pennsylvania Avenue is regurgitating this "police transparency" mantra and other slogans designed at undermining the credibility of cops, then the moral of the proverb is crystal clear: "People who live in glass White Houses shouldn't throw stones."

It's never been tougher to be one of the men in blue than it is right now. Get Roorda's "The War On Police: How the Ferguson Effect Is Making America Unsafe" now at the WND Superstore