The Wages of The War On Cops: 2021 Saw a 65% Increase in Police Killed in Line of Duty
By NBP Editorial Board | February 15, 2022, 16:37 EST
The death of George Floyd in Minnesota in May 2020 unleashed a wave of anti-police sentiment. Across the nation, progressive politicians have pursued a “war on cops,” as Heather Mac Donald has so eloquently explained in her book with that title. Proactive policing has diminished, and criminals have been emboldened. What has been the result?
In President Joe Biden’s first year in office, 76 police officers were killed in the line of duty. That was a huge increase over 2020, when 46 cops were killed.
Even worse, many of the killings were “ambushes,” or unprovoked attacks on police. The Heartland Institute, a non-profit research and education organization based in Illinois, recently reported that 32 of the 76 officers who were killed in America in 2021 were murdered in ambushes, compared to 10 in 2020 and seven in 2019. These killings were essentially assassinations of cops.
The defund-the-police movement and “reform” of laws dealing with bail are examples of anti-cop sentiment fomented by Democratic politicians in Democratic-leaning states. This has resulted in a huge spike in crime and homicides in many cities. Our cities have once again become dangerous because of the actions taken by feckless politicians.
Former New York City mayor Bill de Blasio was the progressive poster child of the war on cops. Serving as mayor for eight years, he returned New York City to the lawless days before Mayor Rudy Giuliani and Police Chief William Bratton during the 1990s transformed New York City into one of the safest cities in America. A legacy of the de Blasio years occurred last month in Harlem. Two police officers were killed when a Baltimore man, who brought a gun to the city, shot them both dead. His mother had called 911 to report a domestic incident at her apartment. Three officers responded to the call. Two of them — Jason Rivera and Wilbert Mora — approached a bedroom. The man reportedly emerged and shot Rivera and Mora, before being killed by the third officer.
Mora, 28, who was born in the Dominican Republic, knew shortly after arriving in New York City at age 7 that he wanted to be a cop. Rivera, 22, the son of Dominican immigrants, wrote while he was at police academy that he wanted to “better the relationship between the community and the police.”
Liberal media vehicles intone endlessly about the number of unarmed blacks killed by the police. Accurate statistics unfortunately are hard to come by. But National Public Radio reported in January 2021 that 135 unarmed blacks were killed by police in the six years between 2015 and 2020. If that statistic is accurate, it means that on average, approximately 22 unarmed black Americans have been killed annually by police.
What the report did not reveal was the circumstances of these killings. What does “unarmed” mean, for instance? Was Rayshard Brooks unarmed? The 27-year-old black man had no weapon when police officers found him intoxicated behind the wheel of a car outside a Wendy’s in Atlanta, Georgia in June 2020. But during a struggle after he was placed under arrest he took an officer’s taser, fled, and while being chased pointed it at the officer who was pursuing him. The officer shot him dead. All of it was captured on video. And yet somehow the police officer, Garrett Rolfe, was fired and charged with first degree murder. (Later reinstated, but still – ludicrously – under prosecution.)
How many of these unarmed blacks were assaulting police officers – just as Michael Brown had done in Ferguson, Missouri in 2014? That’s when the urban myth, accepted by many in America, of “Hands Up, Don’t Shoot” was created.
The only problem is that Brown did not utter those words. Instead, when he was shot and killed he was attacking police officer Daren Wilson and reaching for his gun. The grand jury (with three African-Americans on it) refused to indict Wilson, who shot and killed Brown. Later the U.S. Department of Justice investigation under President Barack Obama’s attorney general, Eric Holder, also exonerated Wilson rather than indicting him. Nevertheless, Black Lives Matters, funded in part by George Soros after the Ferguson shooting, used the demonstrably false rallying cry of “Hands Up, Don’t Shoot” to foster a movement that, to this day, asserts that policing is lethally biased against blacks.
Every death should be lamented. Every death of an unarmed person, more so. But the reality is that of the approximately 42 million African-Americans in this country, a minute fraction — roughly 20 to 25 unarmed blacks, some of whom may have been assaulting police officers at the time — have been killed each year. But the anti-police movement has resulted in 32 police officers assassinated last year, while 76 were killed in the line of duty.
Moreover, the anti-policing movement in many parts of the country has caused a major increase of violent crime, as police officers retreat from pro-active policing. Who gets hurt the most? Blacks and Latinos living in high-crime areas that desperately need law and order.
The citizenry in this country must show the door in the November elections to woke anti-police politicians. This will help not only police officers who daily go in harm’s way but also the residents of the cities that have become dangerous places to live.
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