Before someone says President Obama did no such thing and that Baton Rouge, like Dallas, cannot be laid at his doorstep, let us consider his own statement that "words have consequences". From Ferguson to Baltimore and beyond President Obama's words have been the equivalent of yelling "fire" in a crowded theatre. He has encouraged a false narrative of racist cops and racist police departments whose officers are guilty until proven innocent, or buried, whichever comes first.
If there is a Pearl Harbor in this war on cops, it was Ferguson, Missouri, where President Obama's Justice Department sent 40 FBI agents to prove Officer Darren Wilson was a racist murderer of an innocent black teen. He has made the race-baiting Al Sharpton, who helped create the myth of "hands up, don't shoot", a key adviser on race matters and Ferguson.
Despite efforts to paint the police as racist oppressors, in the end Michael Brown was proven to be a thug of the kind that plagues cities across America, the type police deal with daily, particularly in Obama's Chicago. Brown in fact committed a strong-arm robbery of a Ferguson convenience store before assaulting police officer Darren Wilson, who was found by Atty. Gen. Eric Holder's racially charged Department of Justice to have justifiably used lethal force in defending himself against Brown's attack.
It was Michael Brown's death, based on the "hands up, don't shoot" lie knocked down by the testimony of multiple black witnesses, that fueled the Black Lives Matter movement that that makes, not black-on-black crime, but attempts to enforce the law in black communities the main threat facing blacks. His death, and the false narrative President Obama and the Sharptons of the world fostered in the aftermath of Brown's justified shooting, that helped spark the current war on cops, leading to the carnage in Dallas and Baton Rouge.
In December, 2014, President Obama stoked the fires of animus against cops when he said on BET police were judging blacks, not on the content of their character, but on the color of their skin:
President Barack Obama made an appearance on Black Entertainment Television (BET) Monday to reach out to black Americans and discuss calls for criminal justice reform after two grand jury decisions cleared white police officers in the deaths of two black men. The president has to carefully express his concern for the safety of African-Americans while not undermining the law enforcement community. President Obama suggested that the issue of police vs. minorities is deeply rooted in American culture and is the result of police having a "subconscious fear of folks who look different." ….
"And, you know, I've said it before, the vast majority of law enforcement officers are doing a really tough job, and most of them are doing it well and are trying to do the right thing. But a combination of bad training, in some cases, a combination in some cases of departments that really are not trying to root out biases, or tolerate sloppy police work. A combination, in some cases of folks just not knowing any better, and in a lot of cases, subconscious fear of folks who look different, all of this contributes to a national problem that's going to require a national solution."
Speaking of folks who look different, try the two casualties in the war on cops in New York City, one Latin and one Asian-American. We saw battle cry in the war on cops in New York as "protesters" of police brutality chanted their lust for dead cops. As Heather MacDonald writes in her new book, The War On Cops (Encounter Books, 2016):
In the summer of 2014, as we have seen, a lie overtook significant parts of the country and grew into a kind of mass hysteria. That lie holds that the police pose a mortal threat to black Americans -- indeed, that the police are the greatest threat facing black Americans today. Several subsidiary untruths buttress that central myth: that the criminal-justice system is biased against blacks; that there is no such thing as a black underclass; and that crime rates are comparable between blacks and whites, so that disproportionate police action in minority neighborhoods cannot be explained without reference to racism. The poisonous effect of these lies manifested itself in the cold-blooded assassination of two NYPD officers in December that year. The highest reaches of American society promulgated those untruths and participated in the mass hysteria. President Barack Obama, speaking after a grand jury decided not to indict the police officer who fatally shot Michael Brown, declared that blacks were right to believe that the criminal-justice system was often stacked against them. Obama repeated that message as he traveled around the country subsequently. Eric Holder escalated a long-running theme of his tenure as U.S. attorney general: that the police routinely engaged in racial profiling and needed federal intervention to police properly…
Fast forward to Baltimore, where the death of Freddie Grey while in police custody was treated as another racially motived police murder of a young black man. President Obama sent three aides to Freddie Gray's funeral, something he does not do when blacks shoot other blacks in Chicago. Six Baltimore cops were charged in Freddie Gray's death by State's Attorney Marilyn Mosby, whose public statements deemed the cops guilty beyond doubt. But, as the CNN reported, no cop has been found guilty in the first three trials, one being found completely innocent of second-degree murder:
Baltimore police officer Caesar Goodson, who drove the van in which Freddie Gray was fatally injured, was found not guilty Thursday on all charges, including the most serious count of second-degree depraved-heart murder….
Though Gray's death became a symbol of the black community's distrust of police and triggered days of violent protests, the state has failed to secure a single conviction following three high-profile trials….
The verdict is another setback for State's Attorney Marilyn Mosby, who dramatically announced the charges against the six officers last year from the broad steps of the downtown War Memorial. She shook and bowed her head as the judge delivered the verdict.
As well she should have in her rush to judgment, a rush cheered on by many in and out of the administration. Once again; "guilty" cops are being found innocent. Early on in his administration President Obama began the targeting of innocent cops just try to do their job. As Fox News reported in 2009:
Many police officers across the country have a message for President Barack Obama Get all the facts before criticizing one of our own. Obama's public criticism that Cambridge officers "acted stupidly" when they arrested black Harvard professor Henry Louis Gates Jr. could make it harder for police to work with people of color, some officers said Thursday.
It could even set back the progress in race relations that helped Obama become the nation's first African-American president, they said:
"What we don't need is public safety officials across the country second-guessing themselves," said David Holway, president of the International Brotherhood of Police Officers, which represents 15,000 public safety officials around the country. "The president's alienated public safety officers across the country with his comments."
Ever since that day, police have been second-guessing themselves, beset by accusers who find them guilty of racism and excessive force. In their eyes police are guilty of racism until proven innocent. President Obama, as the first African-American to occupy the White House, had a chance to be a racial healer. Instead he chose to be the great divider, blaming not the thugs who plague our cities, but rather the cops who daily risk their lives to stop the bleeding.
President Obama is not a bystander in the war on cops. He is its commander-in-chief.
Daniel John Sobieski is a freelance writer whose pieces have appeared in Investor's Business Daily, Human Events, Reason Magazine and the Chicago Sun-Times among other publications.
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