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Editorial
Take cop, suspect killings off the political table
Wednesday, September 2, 2015
"Blue and Brave" read one of the signs held by a Fox Lake, Ill., college student who came out today in support of law enforcement officers conducting an intense manhunt to find the three men who killed a popular police lieutenant Tuesday morning.
Friday, a Texas sheriff's deputy was gunned down as he refueled his patrol car. Last week, two Louisiana officers were killed in separate incidents. Two officers died in Mississippi in May during a traffic stop and in December, two New York City police officers were ambushed in their patrol car, after the killer boasted on social media that he planned to kill cops in retaliation for the deaths of Michael Brown in Ferguson, Mo., and Eric Garner on Staten Island.
The Michael Brown and Eric Garner cases injected the racial component into police-public violence, making officers feel like they're putting targets on their backs every time they don their uniforms.
But killings of police officers are nothing new.
In fact, fewer officers are being killed on duty under President Obama's administration than under President George W. Bush's, even after 9/11 police deaths are taken out of the equation.
According to the Officer Down Memorial Page, 426 police officers were intentionally murdered in 2001-06, the first six years of Bush's presidency, after the 9/11 deaths are removed.
During the first six years of Obama's presidency, the total of officers intentionally murdered was 382, a 10 percent drop.
Even with the recent killings, we're on pace for more than 50 deaths in 2015, compared to 77 during Bush's seventh year in office.
But that shouldn't be considered progress.
Any killing is a horrible failure, whether it's an officer simply trying to do a job or a criminal being arrested for a minor crime.
It's too easy to politicize killings of officers or suspects, especially during an election year.
It's true that all lives matter -- no matter their skin color or the uniform they're wearing.
We need to take the issue off the table and make saving lives and ending needless bloodshed a top bipartisan priority.