On Friday, on a stage adorned with American flags and Fraternal Order of Police banners in North Carolina, former President Trump accepted the endorsement of the nation's largest police union.
National Fraternal Order of Police President Patrick Yoes said the “enthusiastic support” reflected the “overwhelming collective will” of the group’s more than 375,000 members nationwide.
“We stand with you and we have your back,” Yoes said, pledging that group members will “make the case” for Trump to Americans across the country over the next two months.
“To me, this is a great endorsement,” Trump said. “Wow, that’s a lot of protection.”
Ahead of Trump’s event, Vice President Kamala Harris’ campaign held a call with its own law enforcement supporters. The first to speak was former U.S. Capitol Police Officer Harry Dunn, who was at the Capitol when a mob of Trump supporters attacked the building on Jan. 6, 2021.
Dunn said Trump's promised support for law enforcement was nothing more than a vote-getting ploy and a lie.
“He will tell my fellow officers that he is your ally, your friend and that he is… [the] “He is not a law and order candidate,” Dunn said. “After what I experienced on January 6, I can assure you that he is not.”
Dunn said he knows many officers who are “appalled that the FOP is even considering endorsing” Trump, given his felony convictions, his actions on Jan. 6 and his recent promise to pardon insurrectionists who attacked police officers that day.
“He abandoned us,” Dunn said. “The law, order and democracy that I swore to protect, he abandoned them.”
With two months to go until the election, both the Trump and Harris campaigns are turning to their law enforcement supporters as a means to turn out voters in a race where crime, along with the economy and immigration, has emerged as a major issue.
Despite downward trends in many crime categories nationwide, voters are tired of retail, drug and violence-related crime and are looking for solutions. A recent poll by the Institute of Governmental Studies at the University of California, Berkeley, co-sponsored by The Times, found that a majority of voters in liberal California support tougher penalties for theft and fentanyl-related crimes.
Both Trump and Harris have said they take these issues seriously and would provide solutions as presidents, while their opponent would only make the problems worse.
Trump has called Harris, a former prosecutor and attorney general of California, soft on crime and anti-police, even pointing to persistent crime problems in cities like San Francisco, where she once served as district attorney. Trump has advocated for more aggressive policing, less federal oversight and more military equipment for local police departments.
U.S. Capitol Police Sgt. Harry Dunn listens during a House committee hearing on Jan. 6, 2022.
(Jacquelyn Martin/Associated Press)
Harris has portrayed Trump, a criminal, as a fraud who solicits support from law enforcement when it suits him to get votes but is otherwise hostile toward them, especially when they have been investigating him. She has advocated for responsive but constitutional policing, stronger federal oversight and less military equipment for local police departments, and has touted the Biden administration’s record funding for law enforcement through COVID-19 relief funds.
Trump’s Friday event was not his first with law enforcement, but it was an important one since the police union has members across the country, including about 17,000 members in California. The group does not represent the larger police agencies in Los Angeles. A spokesman for the Los Angeles Police Protective League, the union that represents rank-and-file LAPD officers, said it is not weighing in on the national race and is instead focused on ousting progressive Los Angeles County District Attorney George Gascón.
After being introduced by Yoes, Trump spoke for nearly an hour. He said law enforcement officers face “more danger and threat than ever before” and that “we have to give them back the power and respect they deserve.”
He said crime was the number one problem people asked him about, and he would re-implement stop-and-frisk and broken windows policing to stop it.
He also repeated many of the lies and complaints he made in his stump speech, some directed at Harris, many to applause from the police officers present. He claimed that violent and other crime are “through the roof,” when data shows the opposite in many parts of the country.
He falsely claimed Harris made it so “you can steal anything you want up to $950” in San Francisco and “nothing happens to you no matter what you do.” He mocked the 2022 attack on Rep. Nancy Pelosi’s husband, Paul, at their San Francisco home, prompting laughter from the crowd.
The event came after a call from the Trump campaign in which campaign officials and law enforcement officials in key states praised Trump's record, blamed Harris for California's crime problems and accused her of being “pro-crime” and “coddling criminals.”
Harris' campaign has also touted support from law enforcement this week, including releasing a letter of endorsement from more than 100 former and current law enforcement officers and leaders.
The letter cites a rise in homicides during Trump’s presidency and a sharp decline during the Biden administration. It describes Harris as someone who “has spent her career enforcing our laws” and Trump as someone “who has been convicted of violating them.”
On the call with Dunn, Sheriff Clarence Birkhead of Durham County, North Carolina, said Trump is trying to “present himself as a friend of law enforcement, but we know that's not true.”
He said Trump would use federal law enforcement to go after his political enemies rather than investing resources in local law enforcement, and would use plans laid out in the conservative Project 2025 to further detain, “making it nearly impossible for us to keep our communities safe from violence.”
He said Harris, by contrast, “has spent her entire career fighting for people and supporting local law enforcement like myself,” which is why officers like those who signed the letter are “lining up” to support her.
Bexar County, Texas, Sheriff Javier Salazar said he was confused by the Fraternal Order of Police's endorsement of Trump, calling him “a person who would not qualify to be a law enforcement officer” given his serious crimes.
Salazar said Trump “uses police officers as nothing more than a photo opportunity or a TV prop” and that he “intends to support law enforcement until we get in his way, until we get in his way and stop him from doing exactly what he wants to do. He proved that on January 6.”
Dunn said Trump's only loyalty is to himself.
“The truth is, he doesn’t care that he put my life and the lives of my fellow Capitol Police officers in danger on January 6,” Dunn said.
