On a NYC street, a reminder of Trump’s toll on law and order | Opinion

A few hundred feet from where a horde of media members were waiting on a recent Wednesday morning in front of a New York courthouse to see if Donald Trump, the self-proclaimed law-and-order president, would be indicted, stood Ice-T, iconic rapper turned TV star on the long-running “Law & Order: SVU.”

It was the “cop killer” on one end of the street, the criminal justice system destroyer on the other.

Before Ice-T (Tracey Lauren Marrow) was known as Det. Odafin Tutuola on SVU, he was known as the artist who rapped:

“I’m cop killer, it’s better you than meCop killer, [expletive] police brutality!Cop killer, I know your family’s grievin’ [expletive]Cop killer, but tonight we get even, haha!

It wasn’t a call for police murder, but rather an expression of the anger Ice-T and other young black men felt about police brutality in the wake of the Rodney King beating at the hands (and feet and batons) of Los Angeles police, which was caught on video but still wasn’t enough to initially secure convictions of the officers who had done the beating. Ice-T was trying to raise the public’s consciousness about an issue that continues plaguing us more than three decades later.

It’s also why his nearly quarter-of-a-century portrayal of a cop on maybe the most successful TV franchise in American history has always seemed surreal to me. His character has humanized police officers in ways few others could. He, of “cop killer” fame, has made it harder to flatten officers into just armed-agents of the state out to brutalize black and brown people. Video capturing a Minneapolis police officer slowly murdering George Floyd on the side of a road in broad daylight sparked the largest protests in American history. But make no mistake, Ice-T’s Det. Tutuola showing up on TV screens every week, and in some cases every day in syndicated episodes, has likely had a longer-lasting effect. His effect is even more surreal when you consider that the inspiration for “SVU” was Linda Fairstein, the prosecutor who helped send five black and brown boys for a rape in Central Park they did not commit.

That’s what I couldn’t get out of my mind while walking the short distance from Thomas Paine Park, where producers were shooting scenes for “SVU,” to Collect Pond Park, where dozens of media members and their cameras had set up awaiting word on a potential indictment of a man who has proclaimed he loves the law more than most, an indictment that did not come that day but eventually did this past week.

“We must maintain law and order at the highest level or we will cease to have a country, 100 percent,” Trump said during a campaign speech in 2016 praising law enforcement. “We will cease to have a country. I am the law-and-order candidate.”

Ice-T is an entertainer portraying a fictional character. Trump was an all-too-real presidential candidate (who would become president) portraying a man who cared about law enforcement and the rule of law even though he’s never cared about either, unless they could be used for his political ambitions or during his quest for even more fame. Trump didn’t care about the several dozen law enforcement officials injured during a violent insurrection attempt sparked by his words and repeated lies about the 2020 election. He doesn’t care about the rule of law, having routinely flaunted it for years on end. He believes the law doesn’t apply to him, or only the ones he decides to adhere to.

It didn’t apply when he took troves of classified documents from the White House and refused to give them back. It didn’t apply when he used his lawyer to pay off a porn star to keep an extramarital affair quiet even as that lawyer was convicted for his role in that scheme.

It didn’t apply to him despite Robert Mueller’s findings that his campaign actively sought out the help of a foreign adversary on his way to his 2016 election victory.

It didn’t apply to him when Senate Republicans ensured he wouldn’t be convicted during impeachment hearings despite clear evidence he tried to bribe Ukraine to help him win re-election.

And he has yet to be charged despite being captured on clear audio asking Georgia officials to “find” him enough votes to declare him the winner of a state in 2020 that he had lost.

That’s why it now makes sense that he was so was comfortable bragging that he could “stand in the middle of Fifth Avenue and shoot somebody, and I wouldn’t lose any voters, OK?” Given all we know, all we’ve learned the past seven years, why doubt that he could?

He gets to break or ignore the law, and his supporters and others have convinced themselves that powerful men like Trump should neither be investigated nor arrested, no matter what they do.

Young black dudes too often on the wrong side of police batons and boots have long had reason to distrust the system. They’ve repeatedly seen people in power get away with horrific crimes. Trump has convinced everyone else to distrust it, too, including supporters who want him treated like a king, and those who’ve grown frustrated watching a powerful man like Trump keep thumbing his nose at what is supposed to be the law.

That’s why it was so odd watching the spectacle in New York City. On one side of the street, there was a man who angrily tried to raise awareness about injustice become one of the system’s greatest mascots. On the other side was a crowd awaiting the appearance of a man who is destroying it.

Issac Bailey is a McClatchy Opinion writer based in Myrtle Beach.