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Richard Belzer and Clint Eastwood Can’t Save the Failing National Law Enforcement Museum

Richard Belzer and Clint Eastwood Can’t Save the Failing National Law Enforcement Museum

(Bloomberg Businessweek) -- Former Presidents Bill Clinton and George H.W. Bush, six former attorneys general, one current attorney general, and even Richard Belzer, who played Munch on Law & Order: Special Victims Unit, weren’t enough to make the National Law Enforcement Museum a success. Just two months after its grand opening in October, the National Law Enforcement Officers Memorial Fund said that its museum a few blocks from the Mall in Washington was headed for default on some of the $103 million it borrowed in 2016. That kind of failure is rare in the $3.8 trillion municipal-bond market, and after two decades of planning and construction, it was a notably quick descent.

The museum counted on its high-profile backers’ fundraising prowess and the willingness of tourists to pay more than $20 a head. To survive now, it must get more visitors in the door. A lot more. In its first three months, the museum attracted only about 15,000 people. It’ll need 20 times that to meet its first-year goal. That’s no easy feat in a city with more than 160 museums—and during an era of widespread anger over police officers’ use of force.

Richard Belzer and Clint Eastwood Can’t Save the Failing National Law Enforcement Museum

Museum officials said the institution offers a balanced account of the profession and provides a unique venue that can inform public debate. “The reason I’m consistently optimistic is there’s nothing like this facility,” said Executive Director David Brant in February. “There’s not too many topics that are more important to the average citizen than law enforcement.” Brant resigned from the museum in March.

Most of the museum is underground, and its entrance matches the look of the bland federal buildings in Washington’s Judiciary Square neighborhood. Visitors go through airport-style security, and—because law enforcement officers are part of its core audience—visitors are asked whether they’re carrying weapons. Attendees can take a photo in the front seat of a patrol car or check out the inside of a cell. There’s a display that shows off shivs, shanks, and other prison contraband.

One section lets visitors guess what weapon was used to bash in different skulls, an exercise Fox News host Jeanine Pirro tried during a lengthy report touting the museum. In a small theater, visitors equipped with mock guns navigate such simulations as a mass shooting at an airport. There’s a display on the rise of body cameras after the 2014 shooting of an unarmed teenager in Ferguson, Mo., caused what the museum calls a “national debate about law enforcement and race.”

Richard Belzer and Clint Eastwood Can’t Save the Failing National Law Enforcement Museum

On a Sunday afternoon in February, there’s no line and only a few dozen visitors. Dave Sullivan, a 59-year-old from Loudoun County, Va., says he appreciated the respect given to officers’ sacrifices. One room is dedicated to officers killed in the line of duty. “They make one mistake and it’s on the front page of every newspaper, whereas all the heroics and things they do for the community don’t ever seem to make that page," he says.

Police, sheriffs, and correctional officers waited a long time for the first-of-its-kind museum. It was conceived to complement a monument honoring slain officers that opened in 1991. The National Law Enforcement Officers Memorial Fund, which oversaw the monument, was put in charge of the museum as part of a 2000 law signed by Clinton. The fund’s board includes representatives from such law enforcement groups as the Fraternal Order of Police and is led by John Ashcroft, former attorney general under George W. Bush. The nonprofit raised money for the museum from companies such as gun maker Glock, motorcycle company Harley-Davidson, and Target, as well as the J. Edgar Hoover Foundation. Celebrities including Belzer and actors from NYPD Blue and The French Connection volunteered to raise money, the 2016 bond documents say.

Permitting delays and the economic downturn in 2008 delayed the opening, Brant said. Not until October 2018 did Clint Eastwood cut the ribbon. The actor became a superstar in 1971 when he portrayed a rogue cop bent on violent justice in Dirty Harry, and his movies have been criticized for promoting racist stereotypes. His prominent role at the museum exemplified the tension for an institution that claims to explore “nearly every facet of American law enforcement” in 2019.

The museum opened at a more fraught moment than when it was envisioned in 2000. For decades, departments have aggressively enforced laws against minor crimes on the theory that doing so would forestall major offenses. But minority communities have complained of discrimination and arrests of innocent people. Phone cameras and social media have allowed people to see firsthand officers’ use of force—including killings—giving rise to the Black Lives Matter movement. There were riots and protests in Baltimore, Chicago, Ferguson, and other cities after police killed black men.

The museum convened an advisory board of academics, religious leaders, and consultants to ensure it reflected different perspectives, and its website says it wants to promote constructive dialogue. “If the choir is talking to the choir, you’re not pushing the conversation forward,” says Kris Marsh, a University of Maryland sociology professor who was on the panel. Even so, a Washington Post review called the museum’s message “copaganda.”

A visit to the institution showed it doesn’t include the perspective of people victimized by officers or prompt critical thinking, says Natacia Knapper, an organizer with the Stop Police Terror Project DC, which seeks to change what it calls militarized policing. More balanced presentations are available—without an admission charge—at the Smithsonian Institution’s National Museum of African American History and Culture and at the National Museum of the American Indian, she says. “I don’t think this museum has anything to say,” Knapper says.

Now its ability to transmit any message is in doubt. Its first-year goal of 300,000 visitors is fewer than half what the International Spy Museum—which also charges admission—drew in its first year, according to bond documents. The National Law Enforcement Officers Memorial Fund reported a $6.1 million net loss in 2018, leading it to raise ticket prices and cut 12 percent of staff. The fund can keep operating over the next year, it said in a February regulatory filing, but the outlook for bondholders is grim. The organization told investors in January that it probably wouldn’t make interest payments on debt due in 2020. It already missed some payments this year. Its big-name backers have asked for assignments on how they can help, says Lori Day, the interim chief executive officer. “We’re telling them to call their friends.”

To contact the editor responsible for this story: Pat Regnier at pregnier3@bloomberg.net, Stephen Merelman

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