Loretta Lynch Announces “Strong Cities Network” Global Policing Initiative-Fiction!

Loretta Lynch Announces “Strong Cities Network” Global Policing Initiative-Fiction!

Summary of the eRumor:
U.S. Attorney General Loretta Lynch has announced a new global policing initiative called the Strong Cities Network to help fight extremism.
The Truth:
Loretta Lynch has unveiled an initiative called the Strong Cities Network, but it’s not a global police initiative, and it doesn’t have law enforcement powers.
Conservative political activist Pamela Geller spread that rumor in a blog post in which she reported that the Strong Cities Network amounted to a global law enforcement initiative that would override American laws:

Yesterday, Loretta Lynch announced before the United Nations that the Attorney General’s office, in collaboration with several US cities, will form a global law enforcement initiative called the Strong Cities Network. This is the implementation of UN rules and laws on US soil, bypassing Congress and circumventing the Constitution. (thanks to Noisy)

The UN is a sharia-compliant world body, and Obama has insisted that jihad is not exclusive to Islam (which it is). So will the UN, driven largely by the sharia-enforcing  OIC (Organization of Islamic Cooperation) and pro-Islamic Obama, use a “global police force” to crush counter jihad forces?

I suspect this global police force will be used to impose the blasphemy laws under the sharia (Islamic law).

But the Strong Cities Network doesn’t have the authority to enforce any laws, so it’s not a global police force. Rather, it’s a network of cities around the world who will share information and best practices to help prevent violent extremism, according to the Department of Justice:

The SCN will connect cities, city-level practitioners and the communities they represent through a series of workshops, trainings and sustained city partnerships. Network participants will also contribute to and benefit from an online repository of municipal-level good practices and web-based training modules and will be eligible for grants supporting innovative, local initiatives and strategies that will contribute to building social cohesion and resilience to violent extremism.

The SCN will include an International Steering Committee of approximately 25 cities and other sub-national entities from different regions that will provide the SCN with its strategic direction. The SCN will also convene an International Advisory Board, which includes representatives from relevant city-focused networks, to help ensure SCN builds upon their work. It will be run by the Institute for Strategic Dialogue (ISD), a leading international “think-and-do” tank with a long-standing track record of working to prevent violent extremism.

Loretta Lynch said the Strong Cities Network would empower local communities by “promoting initiatives they design and lead themselves” to help prevent violent extremism:

These efforts have shown us the power of harnessing local expertise and leveraging local leadership to create targeted and effective approaches to eradicating violent extremism in any community.  We have learned that open dialogue and consistent engagement with a wide range of constituents is essential to crafting strategies and forging partnerships that will address the full scope of the threats we face.  We have seen that communities must be empowered to take these steps themselves so that the prevention approaches they design are crafted for their unique situations.  And we have observed the need for a mechanism that will expand the most effective efforts to reach more people around the globe – a way to highlight the best local ideas so that they can be adapted for use in other communities.

Another important detail is that cities aren’t required to join the Strong Cities Network. They have to “opt in.” New York Governor Bill de Blasio was among the first to do so, the New York Daily News reports:

“The Strong Cities network will be a message to all families who have lost loved ones because of extremism that something is being done in a new and powerful way,” de Blasio said.

He also stressed that the alliance would not focus on any one type of extremism, and pointedly referenced past violent attacks like the 1994 shootings on greater Boston Planned Parenthood clinics and the racially motivated Charleston, S.C., shooting in June that killed nine African-American churchgoers.

“We will be vigilant against all forms of violent extremism, whether it’s based in religious, or racial, or nationalistic or ideological intolerance,” he said.

However, civil liberties groups like the New York Civil Liberties Union and the Association of Muslim American Lawyers have voiced opposition to the Safe Cities Network because they fear it will unfairly target Muslims:

In the letter, the groups cite the recent arrest of a Muslim high school student in Texas on suspicion of bomb making — when he actually brought a homemade clock to school — as evidence of how “high levels of suspicion” harm the community.

It also referenced the NYPD surveillance programs that spied on Muslims, instituted under ex-Mayor Bloomberg, as an example of the kind of program they hoped to avoid.

Donna Lieberman, executive director of the NYCLU, said she appreciated de Blasio’s comments about diversity, but said “today’s announcement raises concerns because what we have heard about CVEs indicates that they can be counterproductive, violative of constitutional rights and stigmatizing.”