Prosecutor resigns from Trump's commission on law enforcement

An elected prosecutor who took a role in Donald Trump’s presidential commission on law enforcement has resigned.

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John Choi, the elected prosecutor in Ramsey County, Minnesota, served as a member of the commission’s criminal justice system personnel intersection working group. But Choi, whose county includes the city of St. Paul, wrote in a letter to Barr that he was quitting his role on one of the commission’s 17 working groups because he worries the final report “will vilify local prosecutors who exercise their well settled prosecutorial discretion consistent with their community’s values and the interests of justice.”

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“Rather than examine how decades of over-policing in communities of color have created that deficit of trust, the Commission was instead encouraged to study ‘underenforcement’ of criminal laws and ‘refusals by State and local prosecutors to enforce laws or prosecute categories of crimes’,” Choi wrote.

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Choi called the commission “a missed opportunity to seriously deliberate in regard to areas for improvement in law enforcement and develop thoughtful solutions to address longstanding problems in the criminal legal system.”

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The Justice Department struck back at Choi, with one official telling HuffPost that Choi didn’t really resign because the working groups had already completed their work. The two chairs of the working group ― former U.S. Attorney Jay Town and Cook County Judge William O’Brien ― also criticized Choi’s work in interviews with HuffPost. Town said Choi offered “very little in substance,” while O’Brien said his opinions “didn’t have a lot of depth.”

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Trump’s order mandated that the commission issue a report within one year ― a deadline that falls just days ahead of the 2020 presidential election.

The commission is stacked with members of law enforcement, and the American Civil Liberties Union has questioned whether it is a “sham commission formed only for the purposes of advancing a ‘Thin Blue Line’ law and order agenda.”

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While Trump’s commission has examined issues like homelessness, addiction, mental health, and improving law enforcement training, there’s also been a heavy focus on “the trend of diminished respect for law enforcement and the laws they enforce.” The “Respect for Law Enforcement” working group is specifically evaluating how “under-enforcement of the criminal law in certain jurisdictions” affects “public safety; public perception of law enforcement and the laws they enforce; police resources and morale; the rule of law.”

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The Trump commission’s final hearings focused on respect for law enforcement and featured police advocates pushing for even harsher laws against those who assault the police and prosecutors complaining about the progressive prosecutor movement.

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It’s unclear exactly when Trump’s commission will issue its report, but it is certain to come before the election and is likely to boost the president’s “law and order” campaign that feeds on Americans’ inaccurate perceptions about crime rates.

  HuffPo

...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.