Yesterday, Presidential frontrunner and all around bad boy Donald Trump received the endorsement of the New England Police Benevolent Association. This may come as a shock to many, but yes he does get endorsements.  What did come as shock was what he said  according to The Hill   while accepting the endorsement:

“One of the first things I’d do in terms of executive order, if I win, will be to sign strong, strong statement that would go out to the country, out to the world, anybody killing policeman police woman, police officer, anybody killing police officer, the death penalty is going to happen,” he said.

In a nutshell, anyone who is convicted of killing a police officer is automatically given a death sentence. It will be mandated. Wow, and here I thought it was a states’ rights thing.  But apparently an Executive Order will Trump that.

And if I could make this perfectly clear, my dad was a cop for quite awhile. My husband was a cop, retired, and now teaches criminal justice to college students. I have the utmost respect and love for law enforcement.  And, truthfully,  in my heart I have no problem seeing a cop killer go down.  But – there are other people in this world that could use the death penalty, too.  Other killers convicted of heinous crimes.  I say all that because I am a believer in the death penalty and more than once I have seen people given a life sentence or life and twenty while I mumble to the TV something about he/she should have gotten the chair.

My questions revolve around, “can he actually do that”?  Can Trump unilaterally put a death penalty in place for all states, even those states that have said no to a death penalty? Does this included killers found mentally incompetent? Maybe he’s just being hyperbolic because of the audience he had. Or maybe he’s serious.  Erick said his ‘undecideds’ from last night want the candidates to say what they will do when they get elected.  No problem with Trump, he’ll tell you in a heartbeat.

Finally, not pertaining to this matter specifically, but do we want another president who just issues up Executive Orders whenever he wants to do something and can’t get Congress to go along?  It’s something to think about because I’m not sure Congress will go along with much of what a President Trump would wants and I fear we would be choked with EOs at every turn.

>Happy Friday/Open Thread.