Voters are fed up with crime, Harris and Trump promote support for law enforcement

On a stage in North Carolina decorated with American flags and banners of the Fraternal Order of Police, former President Trump accepted the endorsement of the nation's largest police union on Friday.

Patrick Yoes, president of the National Fraternal Order of Police, said the “enthusiastic support” reflected the “overwhelming collective will” of the group’s more than 375,000 members nationwide.

“We stand with you and support you,” Yoes said, promising that members of the group would “make the case” for Trump to Americans across the country over the next two months.

“That's a big endorsement for me,” Trump said. “Boy, that's a lot of protection.”

Before Trump's event, Vice President Kamala Harris' campaign team made calls with her 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 January 6, 2021.

Dunn said Trump's promised support for law enforcement was nothing more than an attempt to mobilize votes – and a lie.

“He will tell my colleagues that he is their ally, their friend, and he [the] “I am 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 police officers who are “appalled that the FOP would even consider supporting Trump” given his felony convictions, his actions on Jan. 6 and his recent promise to pardon the insurrectionists who attacked police officers that day.

“He has failed us,” Dunn said. “Law and order and the democracy that I swore to protect – he has failed that.”

With two months to go before the election, both Trump and Harris' campaigns are courting their law enforcement backers to win votes in a campaign in which crime has become one of the top issues, along with the economy and immigration.

Despite downward trends nationwide in many crime categories, voters are nonetheless fed up with retail crime, drug offenses and violence and are looking for solutions. A recent poll conducted by the UC Berkeley Institute of Governmental Studies and co-sponsored by the Times found that a majority of voters in liberal California support tougher penalties for crimes related to theft and fentanyl.

Both Trump and Harris have stated that they take such problems seriously and would find solutions as presidents, while their opponent would only exacerbate the problems.

Trump has portrayed Harris, a former prosecutor and California attorney general, as soft on crime and anti-police, including by pointing to persistent crime problems in cities like San Francisco, where she once served as district attorney. Trump advocates for more aggressive policing, less federal oversight and more military-style equipment for local police departments.

Harris has portrayed Trump, a felon, as a con man who courts law enforcement support when it benefits him in votes but is otherwise hostile to law enforcement – especially when they have investigated him. She has advocated for responsive but constitutional policing, as well as more federal oversight and less military equipment for local police departments, and touted record law enforcement funding from the Biden administration's COVID-19 relief money.

Trump's appearance on Friday was not his first time addressing law enforcement, but it was significant because the police union has members across the country — including about 17,000 members in California. The group does not represent the largest law enforcement agencies in Los Angeles. A spokesman for the Los Angeles Police Protective League, the union that represents rank-and-file LAPD officers, said it was not getting involved in the national election campaign and was instead focused on ousting progressive LA County District Attorney George Gascón.

After being introduced by Yoes, Trump spoke for nearly an hour, saying that police officers “face greater danger and threats than ever before” and that “we must give them back the power and respect they deserve.”

He said crime was the most frequently asked issue and that he would reinstate stop-and-frisk and broken-windows policing to put an end to it.

He also repeated many of his lies and complaints from his campaign speech – some of them aimed at Harris, many to the applause of the assembled police officers. He claimed violent and other crimes were “through the roof,” while the data shows the opposite is true in many parts of the country.

He falsely claimed that Harris had set it up so that in San Francisco you can “steal as much as you want, up to $950,” and “nothing will happen to you no matter what the hell you do.” He mocked the 2022 attack on Paul, the husband of Representative Nancy Pelosi, at their San Francisco home, sparking laughter from the crowd.

The event was preceded by a phone call with Trump's campaign team in which campaign staff and police officials from swing states praised Trump's record, blamed Harris for California's crime problems and accused her of being “pro-crime” and “pampering criminals.”

The Harris campaign also touted support for law enforcement this week, including by releasing a letter of recommendation from more than 100 former and current police officers and leaders.

The letter cites a rise in the murder rate during Trump's presidency and a sharp decline during the Biden administration. Harris is described as someone who “has spent her career enforcing our laws” and Trump as someone “who has been convicted of breaking the law.”

In the phone call with Dunn, Sheriff Clarence Birkhead of Durham County, North Carolina, said Trump was trying to “portray himself as a friend of law enforcement, but we know that's not true.”

He said Trump would use federal police to pursue his political opponents instead of investing resources in local police, and he would use the conservative Project 2025 plans to withhold even more money – “which would make it nearly impossible for us to protect our communities from violence.”

He said Harris, on the other hand, “has spent her entire career fighting for the people and standing alongside local law enforcement like me,” which is why officials like the letter's signatories are “lining up” to support her.

Sheriff Javier Salazar of Bexar County, Texas, said he was confused by the Fraternal Order of Police's support of Trump, calling him “an individual who would not be fit to serve as a law enforcement officer” because of his criminal record.

Salazar said Trump “uses police officers as photo opportunities or as props for television” and “pretends to support law enforcement until we get in his way – until we get in his way and prevent him from doing exactly what he wants to do. He proved that on January 6th.”

Dunn said Trump was only responsible 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.