From his resume, Ismail Ramsey seems like a good guy. He’s widely respected among his lawyer colleagues. He climbed the career ladder until becoming the District Attorney of Contra Costa County and, then, a U.S. Attorney for the Northern District of California.
Somewhere along the line, Ramsey, who is Black, became something of a police basher. He concluded that misconduct was far too common in police departments, a view that perhaps was influenced by his friend John Burris, the ambulance chaser who’s been among the most vocal police critics in California. Ramsey, as U.S. Attorney, was heavily involved in the Antioch Police Department (APD) scandal of 2024, when allegedly racist text messages were exchanged between APD officers. The U.S. Department of Justice, then under President Biden, placed APD under a form of monitoring similar to that of the Oakland Police Department, whom Robert Warshaw has ruled for many years. At the time the negotiated settlement was announced, Ramsey said “A police department that discriminates based on race and other protected classes undermines both public safety and public confidence. Today’s agreement will help ensure that policing in Antioch is done constitutionally and will help restore public trust.”
Last week, President Trump fired Ramsey. The White House offered no explanation, but it seems likely that Ramsey’s forays into police misconduct put him on the wrong side of the ongoing debate over policing. Trump is a big defender of the police and has little tolerance for suggestions that misconduct is widespread among cops.
I’m not taking sides here nor do I dispute that Trump has the right to fire U.S. Attorneys whose political philosophies differ from his. But I will point out that there’s been a sea change in public attitudes toward the cops over the last, say, four years, and especially since Trump was elected. I believe that cops are persecuted by the far left and that the case against them has been widely, obscenely exaggerated by the left and its obedient media.
This is not to say that cops don’t do bad stuff. When and if they do, it’s correct to investigate them and, if significant wrongdoing is proved, then penalties must ensue. But we have an entire industry—call it the cop hating/media complex—whose existence depends on stirring up public suspicion of our nation’s police officers. This complex is wrong and dangerous. Ismail Ramsey, as I said, is a good man, and perhaps his firing was unjust. But his firing may also be a harbinger that things have changed in America. It’s no longer helpful to a prosecutor’s career to be perceived as anti-cop. Ask Chesa Boudin and Pamela Price.
Steve Heimoff