President Barack Obama is dropping any anti-cop rhetoric as he tries to calm the cop-hatred among some African-Americans which is fueling military-style attack on cops, such as the Dallas and Baton Rouge attacks that have killed eight cops this month.
“I condemn, in the strongest sense of the word, the attack on law enforcement in Baton Rouge,” said Obama’s formal statement, just hours after the July 17 attack that killed three cops in Baton Rouge, La., and 10 days after the attack that killed 5 cops in Dallas. His message want out to all Americans — but was specifically targeted to his radical supporters, including those in the Black Lives Matter movement.
These are attacks on public servants, on the rule of law, and on civilized society, and they have to stop … there is no justification for violence against law enforcement. None. These attacks are the work of cowards who speak for no one. They right no wrongs. They advance no causes. The officers in Baton Rouge; the officers in Dallas – they were our fellow Americans, part of our community, part of our country, with people who loved and needed them, and who need us now – all of us – to be at our best.
That’s much stronger language than the mixed-message he delivered at the July 12 Dallas commemoration for the five cops killed on July 7.
We’re here to honor the memory, and mourn the loss, of five fellow Americans — to grieve with their loved ones, to support this community, to pray for the wounded, and to try and find some meaning amidst our sorrow … [but] with an open heart, police departments will acknowledge that, just like the rest of us, they are not perfect; that insisting we do better to root out racial bias is not an attack on cops, but an effort to live up to our highest ideals.
The mixed-message from Dallas language fueled continued pressure from Obama’s Black Lives Matter allies, even after the five cops were killed in Dallas. “It’s mind changing time,” claimed Al Sharpton during his July 16 address from his the National Action Network’s “House of Justice” in Harlem, N.Y., just one day before the Baton Rouge attack.
Before the Dallas attack, Obama was pushing the single-themed message that racism is causing the death of African-Americans in stressful confrontations with police.
“All Americans should be deeply troubled by the fatal shootings of Alton Sterling in Baton Rouge, Louisiana and Philando Castile in Falcon Heights, Minnesota,” he said July 7, hours before the Dallas attack.
We’ve seen such tragedies far too many times, and our hearts go out to the families and communities who’ve suffered such a painful loss … regardless of the outcome of such investigations, what’s clear is that these fatal shootings are not isolated incidents. They are symptomatic of the broader challenges within our criminal justice system, the racial disparities that appear across the system year after year, and the resulting lack of trust that exists between law enforcement and too many of the communities they serve.
Obama’s calm-down message is trying to reverse the rising level of attacks on police by African-Americans who have embraced Obama’s racist cops claim, say critics.
“The overwhelming odds are that this most recent assault on law and order, taking the lives of three officers and wounding at least three more, is the direct outcome of the political and media frenzy that followed the police shootings of Alton Sterling in Baton Rouge and Philando Castile in Falcon Heights, Minnesota, less than two weeks ago,” said author Heather Mac Donald, the author of the 2016 book, “The War on Cops: How the New Attack on Law and Order Makes Everyone Less Safe.”
“That frenzy further amplified the dangerously false narrative that racist police officers are the greatest threat facing young black men today [and] President Barack Obama bears direct responsibility for the lethal spread of that narrative,” she wrote July 17.
Obama began pushing the “racist cop” theme in August, 2014, shortly before the mid-term elections, when a young black man was shot in Ferguson, Mo. Since then, Obama has largely ignored the growing number of attacks on police, and his deputies slammed police officials — including the FBI director — who said his “racist cops” theme was making policing in black communities more difficult.
In December 2014, for example, when two New York cops were shot in their patrol guy by an angry African-American man, Obama sent Vice-President Joe Biden to the funeral. In May 2015, as a he signed a minor bill named after the two dead New York cops, he didn’t even condemn the attack, even though the attacker set out to kill cops in supposed revenge for killing of African-Americans in confrontations with cops. He said:
Well, as some of you aware, several weeks ago we lost two of New York’s finest, Rafael Ramos and Wenjian Liu. They were serving their community with great honor and dedication and courage. And all of New York grieved and all of the nation grieved. It was a reminder of the incredibly difficult and dangerous work that so many of our law enforcement officers are engaged in every single day…
A few days prior, on May 8, Obama used a meeting with police groups to push his campaign to federalize the nation’s police forces.
Our law enforcement officers have extraordinarily tough jobs. They regularly work in dangerous environments and in difficult, high-tension situations. And they often face challenges deeply rooted in systemic problems and broader social issues … One important way to make policing safer and more effective is by continuing to enhance relations and trust between law enforcement and the neighborhoods they serve … My Administration is taking concrete steps to implement the commonsense, pragmatic recommendations my Task Force on 21st Century Policing put forward based on input from law enforcement personnel as well as criminal justice experts, community leaders, and civil liberties advocates.
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