Safety and support for police among GOP convention’s first-day themes

By Megan Messerly

Tuesday, July 19, 2016 | 2 a.m.

The city on Monday was a crucible.

Fifty-thousand visitors, 5,500 law enforcement officers, Black Lives Matter demonstrators and gun-restriction opponents openly carrying weapons in the public square converged on this Rust Belt city of 390,000 for the first day of the Republican National Convention, one tense day after the ambush and killing of three police officers in Baton Rouge, La.

Since mid-June, the flag has flown at half-staff for 20 days: Orlando, Dallas, Nice, Baton Rouge. Terrorist attacks encouraged by ISIS, killings of police and slayings of unarmed black men have left Americans of all political persuasions uneasy.

In the wake of the Baton Rouge slayings, the leader of Cleveland’s police union called on Ohio Gov. John Kasich on Sunday to suspend the state’s open-carry laws. The law had been criticized leading up to the convention, with some people noting that tennis balls were banned from the “event zone” around the arena, but guns were allowed.

A brief security concern late Monday morning did nothing to calm nerves, halting entry into Quicken Loans Arena in downtown Cleveland.

“Maybe we shouldn’t be standing so close,” a delegate from Tennessee said amid a throng of delegates, the news media and staffers waiting to be allowed entry.

Against that backdrop, the theme of Monday night’s speeches seemed apt to many: Make America Safe Again. It also fell in line with Trump’s apparent shift toward running as the “law and order” candidate amid reports that he plans to emulate some of Richard Nixon’s 1968 campaign strategy.

Convention speakers sought to draw a line between safe and unsafe — with safe meaning helping veterans, supporting the police and electing Donald Trump, and unsafe meaning open borders, Syrian refugees and electing Hillary Clinton president.

The speakers suggested the Democrats had responded ineptly or inadequately to threats from outside the U.S.

Patricia Smith, whose son Sean died in the siege in Benghazi, Libya, said she blamed former Secretary of State Clinton “personally” for her son’s death. Several blamed the deaths of loved ones at the hands of immigrants on open borders that failed to prevent their unauthorized entry into the country. More suggested that allowing in refugees from Syria, where a bloody civil war has raged for five years, would make the U.S. less safe.

“Are you safer than you were eight years ago?” Rep. Michael McCaul, R-Texas, asked the crowd, which shouted back a resounding “no.”

McCaul promised the crowd that Trump would “never bow down to our enemies,” and that the way to make America safe again was to take the country back from a “dangerous liberal agenda” of open borders, amnesty for immigrants here illegally and allowing Syrian refugees into the country.

Looking within the country’s borders, they blamed President Barack Obama for creating a racially tense climate.

“We’re more racially divided today than before he ran,” said El Paso County (Colo.) Commissioner Darryl Glenn, who is black.

Milwaukee County Sheriff David Clarke, who also is black, emphasized to the crowd that “Blue Lives Matter” — the phrase used to express support for police officers. Protecting officers' lives is key to making the nation safe again, Clarke said.

Former New York Mayor Rudy Giuliani painted a distinction between justified and unjustified shootings by police.

“We reach out our arms with understanding and compassion to those who have lost loved ones because of police shootings, some justified and some unjustified,” Giuliani said. “Those that are unjustified must be punished. Those that are justified, we must apologize to.”

Those arguments largely mirrored the thoughts and concerns that members of the Nevada delegation expressed about safety in this country. Nevada State Party Chairman Michael McDonald said he thought Clark County Sheriff Joe Lombardo had done a good job of building strong relationships between law enforcement and residents.

“Coming out of this convention, we have to respect our police officers,” McDonald said. “There won’t be an America without them. They’re the first line of defense to protect the innocent.”

Nevada delegate George Assad, a retired Las Vegas municipal court judge, blamed Obama for the recent violence against police.

“I think the blood of those police officers is on the hands of President Obama and Attorney General Eric Holder for inciting rhetoric that is anti-American and anti-law enforcement,” Assad said. “The president needs to use his bully pulpit to address various groups that want to kill police officers.”

He also said he didn’t believe in blaming guns for violence in America, pointing to the truck involved in the attack in Nice and the bombs used in the Boston Marathon bombing.

Nevada delegate Juanita Cox agreed, saying she feels safer knowing that people have guns.

“People must be responsible for their own actions,” Cox said. “An armed society is a polite society.”

She also pushed back at the notion that Trump had contributed to the racial divide in the country with remarks targeting groups including Hispanics and Muslims.

“He wants a society that is lawful,” Cox said. “I believe that’s what Trump was saying.”

Cox also acknowledged the need for the Republican Party to diversify.

“With the platform, I had gone in with the intent that we need to have a minimal platform that attracts millennials,” Cox said. “The party shouldn’t be old and white.”