The president of the Philadelphia Fraternal Order of Police claimed Monday that Hillary Clinton’s team blew them off and didn’t even try to secure their endorsement.
John McNesby, whose chapter endorsed GOP nominee Donald Trump Sunday evening after the National Fraternal Order of Police announced its support Friday afternoon, said in a radio interview the Clinton campaign showed no interest in securing support from his or any other police union.
“They didn’t care. Their attitude, then, back in July, during the [Democratic National Convention], was they were going to win this thing anyway, so who cares?” McNesby said.
“Now, I think the tides have turned a little bit and she’s on her heels. As many times as we’ve tried to … have it a fair process and an open process, the emails back were that they’re not interested and no thanks. Just snide things like that,” he said.
The National Order of Police announced its endorsement of Trump last week. The national police union, which hasn’t endorsed a Democratic presidential candidate since 1996, declined to support either candidate in the 2012 election.
“Obviously, this is an unusual election,” FOP President Chuck Canterbury said in a statement Friday.
“We have a candidate who declined to seek an endorsement and a candidate without any record as an elected official. Mr. Trump, however, has seriously looked at the issues facing law enforcement today. … He’s made a real commitment to America’s law enforcement and we’re proud to make a commitment to him and his campaign by endorsing his candidacy today,” his statement said.
The union’s executive director, Jim Pasco, said it decided to endorse Trump after he answered their 12-page questionnaire on employee rights and criminal justice issues.
“His representations to us, both in his public statements about police and in our meeting with him as a follow-up to the questionnaire,” Pasco said last week, “he made commitments to us that he would support law enforcement if he was elected, and keep our views in mind as he undertook to uphold the threshold responsibility of a president, which is to protect public safety.”
On Monday, McNesby explained it was an easy decision following the national union’s lead.
“We’re falling in line with the national FOP and, basically, she just disregarded and blew the police off. You can’t go in and expect to get respect when you didn’t give it to us. We gave a very fair process, we thought,” McNesby said.
“We put out a questionnaire and she absolutely refused … outright refused, with a nasty campaign rebuttal to why she wouldn’t. Simple as that, we went in and we participated with the candidate that cooperated. He filled it out. We met with him,” he said.
Though McNesby and other police officials claim Clinton gave them the cold shoulder, the Democratic nominee has put in some effort in the 2016 election reaching out to members of the law enforcement community.
“I believe supporting our police officers and improving policing go hand in hand,” Clinton said in August during a meeting in with top law enforcement officials. “Everyone is safer when there is respect for the law, and when everyone is respected by the law.”
Clinton met in New York City in August with retiring New York City Police Commissioner Bill Bratton; his successor, James O’Neill; Charles Beck of the Los Angeles Police Department; and former police chief of Philadelphia Charles Ramsey.
Officials representing police in Arizona, New Jersey, Texas and Washington State were also present at the roundtable discussion with Clinton.
“I want to support them, our police officers, with the resources they need to do their jobs. To do them effectively, to learn from their efforts, and to apply those lessons across our nation,” Clinton said.
“So we have a lot of work to do together, and we don’t have a minute to lose and the people around this table are pioneering, they are reforming, they are on top of the debates and concerns that have been expressed over the last couple of years,” she added, “and I think we can come together with a sense of shared purpose and a belief in our common destiny to have a purpose where we go forth united and do everything possible to respond to any legitimate questions, to find answers together, and to keep our communities safe.”
She concluded, “To protect lives and property, but also respect every single American.”
