On a stage decorated with American flags and banners from the Fraternal Order of Police in North Carolina on Friday, former President Trump accepted the endorsement of the nation’s largest police union.
National Fraternal Order of Police President Patrick Yoes said the “enthusiastic endorsement” reflected the “overwhelming collective will” of the group’s more than 375,000 members nationwide.
“We stand with you and we support you,” Yoes said, promising that the group’s members would “advocate” for Trump to Americans across the country over the next two months.
“It’s a great support for me,” Trump said. “It’s a great protection.”
Before Trump’s event, Vice President Kamala Harris’ campaign held a conference 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 January 6, 2021.
Dunn said Trump’s promised support for law enforcement was nothing more than a vote-winning ploy — and a lie.
“He’s going to tell my fellow officers that he’s their ally, that he’s their friend and that he’s [the] “He’s a law and order candidate,” Dunn said. “After what I experienced on January 6, I can assure you he is not.”
Dunn said he knows many 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 insurrectionists who attacked police officers that day.
“He has abandoned us,” Dunn said. “He has abandoned the law, order and democracy that I swore to protect.”
With two months to go before the election, the Trump and Harris campaigns are tapping their law enforcement backers to attract voters in a race where crime, like the economy and immigration, has become a major issue.
Despite the decline in crime across many categories nationwide, voters are still tired of retail crime, drug crimes and violence, and are looking for solutions. A recent poll by the University of California, Berkeley’s Institute for Governmental Studies, co-sponsored by the Times, found that a majority of voters in liberal California favor tougher penalties for theft and fentanyl crimes.
Both Trump and Harris have said they take these issues seriously and will address them as president, while their opponent will only exacerbate the problems.
Trump has portrayed Harris, a former prosecutor and California attorney general, as lax and anti-police, particularly by highlighting persistent crime problems in cities like San Francisco, where she 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 Sergeant Harry Dunn listens during a House of Representatives committee session on January 6, 2022.
(Jacquelyn Martin/Associated Press)
Harris has portrayed Trump, a felon, as a fraud who solicits support from law enforcement when it makes it easier to vote but is otherwise hostile to law enforcement — especially when they investigate him. She has advocated for responsive but constitutional policing, stronger federal oversight and less military equipment for local police departments, and 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 a major one because the police union has members across the country — including some 17,000 members in California. The group does not represent the largest law enforcement agencies in Los Angeles. A spokesperson for the Los Angeles Police Protective League, the union that represents rank-and-file LAPD officers, said it was not weighing in on the national race and was 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 faces “more dangers and threats than ever before” and that “we need to give them back the power and respect they deserve.”
He said crime was the number one issue people asked him about and he would bring back “ID checks” and “broken window checks” to stop it.
He also repeated many of the lies and grievances he made in his campaign speech, some aimed at Harris, many of them applauded by the assembled law enforcement. He claimed that violent and other crime was “through the roof,” when the data shows otherwise in many parts of the country.
He falsely alleged that Harris had made it so “you can steal as much as 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 followed a Trump campaign conference call in which campaign officials and law enforcement officials from key states praised Trump’s record, blamed Harris for California’s crime problems and accused her of being “pro-crime” and “coddling criminals.”
This week, Harris’ campaign also touted support from law enforcement, including releasing an endorsement letter from more than 100 current and former law enforcement officers and leaders.
The letter notes a spike in homicides during Trump’s presidency and a sharp decline under the Biden administration. It describes Harris as someone who has “spent her career upholding our laws” and Trump as someone “who has been convicted of breaking them.”
In the call with Dunn, Durham County, North Carolina, Sheriff Clarence Birkhead 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 law enforcement to hunt down his political enemies instead of investing resources in local law enforcement, and would use plans outlined in the Conservative Project 2025 to hold back even more — “making it nearly impossible for us to protect our communities from violence.”
He said Harris, on the contrary, “has spent her entire career fighting for people and supporting local law enforcement officers like myself,” which is why officers like those who signed the letter are “lined 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 be qualified to be a law enforcement officer” given his crimes.
Salazar said Trump “uses police officers as nothing more than a photo opportunity or a TV prop” and that he “pretends to support law enforcement until we get in his way — until we stop him from doing exactly what he wants to do. He proved that on January 6th.”
Dunn said Trump’s only loyalty was 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.
