So
not even a full week since a Harris County Serif’s deputy was killed execution
style in Houston, Texas another officer was slain in the line of duty in
Illinois in the Town of Fox Lake. While obviously the cases are completely
unrelated, in the first case, the authorities are still trying to find out why
the deputy was killed at the gas station he was at. In the second the officer
was in pursuit of three suspects and got mortally wounded before his backup
could arrive. Nonetheless, both these two cases and others of the like do perhaps
raise the question of if the highly anti-police atmosphere and protests out
there have perhaps created a situation where the cops are more vulnerable to the
criminals both fighting back and even as in the first place seeking them out to
kill them.
Since the unfortunate, but highly
published police shootings of black suspects from Ferguson, Missouri’ Michael
Brown (which by the way the police
officer involved was found to have done no wrong) and the accidental death of
Freddie Gray in Baltimore, Maryland, and the resulting riots, there has been an
extreme rise in anti-cop rhetoric that have in a lot of cases spewed hate
against police. The most notorious group is the so-called “Black Lives Matter” movement.
Their rhetoric of “pigs in a
blanket, Fri them like bacon” being the most famous does nothing but create
more bad blood for police officers. Are some of their complaints against cops for unjust practices and overuse of force in some cases justified? To a certain
extent, yes, the police are human like the rest of us and in any human
organization or fraternity there will be abuses and some wrong doings and those
most surely deserve to have our attention and be looked at to both prevent more and
punish any wrong-doing. But the way the “Black Lives Matter” movement is going
about it is totally wrong and not solving anything except more violence and
hatred for the police.
Another point of just how much more
harm the movement causes than the healing it says it is trying to do is the
perception that is put out there by just the name itself “Black lives Matter.”
That name phrase does nothing but encourage, more militancy among blacks who
feel victimized by a whole bunch of issues in today’s society. It creates no
healing because by its very name it divides. As has already been noted by
several different public figures and others already No, not Black lives matter but all life matter! We are all human
beings equal under God to be treated no differently than any other because of
some phony conceived notion of race.
To the matter at hand, is the
increased amount of negative rhetoric and anti-cop atmosphere to blame for the
increase amount of brutal police deaths, (some cases for what appeals no
apparent reason) or is there any link between the two at all? To be sure, in the death of the Harris County
deputy where there is no clear motive behind the shooting other than the
shooters own hatred and bad blood for cops, the answer is most likely. In this
case an increased atmosphere of anti-cop rhetoric nation wide could very well
have encouraged the shooter. In the death of the Illinois officer, it is less
clear since he was shot in the pursuit of suspects.
Nonetheless, it is possible that in
that instance and others like it that the anti-cop rhetoric, are emboldening
criminals to fight back against police officers when confronted by them. At the
same time, the amount of police deaths this year and last year too comparing years is not its self a convincing argument for saying that an increase in
anti-cop attitudes are responsible for increases in cop deaths in the line of
duty. For one according to the National
Law Enforcement Officers Memorial Fund, www.nleomf.org/facts/officer-fatalities-data/causes.html, going back several years shooting
deaths were always pretty high. In 2005, it was 60 and in 2009 it was 50 and
for 2014 it was 48 compared to the 24 this year. www.odmp.org/search/year
It is clear that there is more than
any one thing that plays to the killing of police officers and unfortunately
may just be a fact of life and the nature of the job. Police officers do
put their lives on the line to keep the peace and help others. Nonetheless, it
does not totally discount the possibility of the high amounts of police hostility
in the nation playing some hand in the deaths. For sure it is not making the
lives of police any safer and it also does not excuse the uncalled for utter
hatred and uncivilized behavior towards them by groups like “Black Lives
Matter.”