More recently the ADL had its offices in San Francisco and Los Angeles raided by police with search warrants who found thousands of stolen confidential police files which the ADL had acquired illegally by having its agents inside California law-enforcement agencies. One might think that with a record like the ADL has, law-enforcement agencies would scrupulously avoid any contact with the organization. The unfortunate fact is that most law-enforcement agencies aren't even aware of the ADL's history of criminal affiliations and activities. They aren't aware of these things because the controlled media to a large degree have avoided saying anything about them. Cops tend to be the sort of people who believe what they are told by the mass media, because of the media's aura of authority.
Cops are authoritarians.
Beyond the impropriety of having a criminal organization teaching our policemen who the bad guys and the good guys are is the effect organizations such as the ADL and the Southern Poverty Law Center have on police attitudes and behavior. Cops instinctively dislike boat-rockers and dissidents. They may be contemptuous of Bill Clinton as a person, but they are not contemptuous of the system of which Clinton is a part. They are naturally hostile toward anyone who questions authority or speaks out against the system. Today's cops have been taught that they aren't permitted to thump Blacks who demonstrate with Jesse Jackson the way they used to thump Blacks who demonstrated with Martin Luther King 35 years ago.