The tone and language of the order are angry and threatening. “Unleashing” suggests officers snarling and growling at suspects, necks strained against the leash of what it says are “‘diversity, equity, and inclusion’ initiatives that restrict law enforcement activity or endanger citizens.” In the order, the president calls on officers to police more “aggressively,” “tenaciously,” and “firmly,” the clear message being that they should be unchecked by laws and left-wingers. Departments are to be provided war-making equipment and supported in their military approach by undefined “surge resources.”
The order’s talk of “indemnification” for police threatens local and state elected officials for what the president sees as unfair treatment of police personnel accused of violating laws and procedures. In his telling, officers under investigation for any sort of alleged misconduct or wrongdoing are ipso facto the victims, “wrongly accused and abused by State or local officials.”
One can readily insert the terms “Massachusetts” and “Boston” into the executive order where he directs the Justice Department to investigate and prosecute state and local officials who, in the view of Trump’s Justice Department, are interfering in some way with law enforcement.
The order to rescind federal consent decrees overseeing police departments is a grave disservice to, and indeed a threat to the safety of, the hundreds of thousands of good cops who show up each day and night trying to do the right thing. The progress we have made, in Massachusetts and across the country, in operating departments that are responsive to and respectful of the communities they serve is rooted in a commitment to community-police collaboration. Pitting police and communities against one another makes everyone less safe.
The subject and language of presidential pronouncements are always highly consequential. When it comes to the subject of policing, we have firsthand experience of that in Boston.
When President Clinton visited Boston in 1997<> to highlight the city’s efforts – based on strong police-community collaboration -- to reduce youth firearm violence, he said he wanted to “give every community the tools that you have used to make your city safe again so that we can do it everywhere in America.”
That presidential attention spurred a change in public safety practice across the country, as formerly siloed operations evolved into today’s collaborations among police, clergy, probation officers, and many others. Under the current president’s executive order, these advances will be trampled underfoot by reducing the comprehensive approach to public safety to a single tactic: aggressive enforcement by police, shoulder to shoulder with armed forces units.
Trump’s words appear designed to remake our understanding of what actually works to reduce and prevent crime and harm in our communities. Decades of experience and research have demonstrated the value of collaborative prevention strategies involving police and many additional stakeholders. Collaboration confers legitimacy, making police more effective, especially in communities with historically poor relationships with law enforcement. .
The great irony of Trump’s muscular call for militarized law and order is that he has long denigrated the very ideas about law and justice that helped to drive the American Revolution and the framing of much of the Massachusetts and US constitutions. He disparages the independent judiciary, attacks the sanctity of trial by a jury of one’s peers, and dismisses the presumption of innocence.
The police service his order envisions could well be clad in redcoats, rounding up anyone who has displeased the king. As the Boston of the Adamses, Hancock, and Crispus Attucks sorely vexed George III, the Boston of Wu vexes the White House in our time.
Trump has made an art form of pandering with his words to police officers’ genuine concerns about their safety, but then contradicting himself in deed. His pardon of people who attacked and led to the deaths of US Capitol Police officers on January 6, 2021, is only the most obvious example. More recently, he praises police in speeches for their great work, but sends in the armed forces to make up for their make-believe shortcomings in managing crime and disorder.
The danger of all this is in the power of the bully pulpit. Falsehoods repeated often enough have a way of becoming not only perceived as facts, but the underpinning for reckless public policy. | 
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