When you heard the terrible news from Brooklyn on Saturday afternoon, were you completely surprised to learn that a gunman killed two police officers in cold blood? Or were you, at some level, expecting some kind of atrocity like this to happen?
Well, you can put me in the latter category. I’ve had a sick feeling in my gut ever since the protests began against police last summer. It seemed inevitable as these protests gained strength that they would culminate in some senseless tragedy. And now it has come to pass.
Anyone with eyes to see should have known that the demonstrations of recent months would eventually lead to violent attacks on the police. Despite claims that the protests were “peaceful,” they in fact were marred by violence from the beginning. In Ferguson, Missouri, where the protests began last August, demonstrators rioted, burned buildings, and threatened police following the death of Michael Brown in an altercation with a police officer. These scenes were repeated both in that city and across the country a few weeks ago when the grand jury refused to indict the police officer in the incident.
Following the grand jury announcement, the protests went national. A few weeks ago demonstrators shut down traffic on highways and terrorized motorists in New York City, Berkeley, Los Angeles, St. Louis, and other cities, denouncing “police brutality” and racial animus as they did so. There were ugly aspects to these demonstrations, particularly in the overheated racial rhetoric that many participants recklessly threw about.
In New York last week, a few demonstrators chanted, “What do we want? Dead Cops! When do we want it? Now!” Some participants physically attacked police officers in demonstrations at the Brooklyn Bridge. In a related event in midtown Manhattan, demonstrators broke into the offices of the Manhattan Institute, a think tank that has promoted the “broken windows” theory of community policing, threatening employees and scrawling epithets on the walls. Last week two public defenders in the City staged an internet video in which they simulated the murder of a police officers.
None of these events seemed “peaceful” to the police officers and citizens on the receiving end of the threats and assaults. While liberal commentators whined about threats to free expression from North Korea, they ignored attacks on that principle coming from their own quarters.
Liberals in the news media, especially those at outlets like The New York Times, MSNBC, and CNN, covered these events sympathetically, making it clear that they generally agreed with the demonstrators and were giving them attention as a means of giving additional strength to their movement. CNN provided wall-to-wall coverage of the protests in recent weeks, and its commentators strongly implied that they were on the side of the protestors and against the police. Meanwhile Al Sharpton has used his own program on MSNBC to promote the activist cause.
Sharpton and his allies encouraged the demonstrations and overheated anti-police rhetoric as a means of keeping the “movement” going and collecting whatever political dividends could be gleaned from it. Unfortunately, they have had an assist from influential leaders, especially New York’s Mayor Bill de Blasio and President Obama himself. As commentator Howard Kurtz observed recently, “As Sharpton has inserted himself into the tense situation in Ferguson, he’s had an assist from none other than the president of the United States.” Kurtz also noted that Sharpton has a “direct line” to the White House; and it is well known that Sharpton regularly visits with the President and his aides to plot strategy.
For his part, Mayor de Blasio has appeared at demonstrations, openly siding with the protestors and criticizing his own police force. He told his own son recently that he should take special care in his encounters with police officers. The Mayor was elected to office in the first place on an anti-profiling (what some might call anti-police) platform. It remains to be seen if he can survive in his post while he is openly at war with his police department.
The Mayor, President Obama, and influential media outlets ignored the overheated rhetoric and threats against police. To some degree, they encouraged more of them by looking the other way and ignoring the dangers that were staring them in the face.
Now all the violent rhetoric and reckless accusations have finally led to the murder of two New York City police officers, as they sat in their patrol cars yesterday near a public housing project in Brooklyn. This should not have come as a surprise, as one police spokesman declared last night. “Unfortunately, I don’t believe anyone connected to law enforcement is surprised this happened,” Gary McLhinney, a negotiator for police unions, told The Washington Post. “When our leaders make statements that encourage lawlessness and demean an entire profession, this is the result.”
Police Commissioner Bill Bratton called the attack an “assassination.” From what we know now, that is an accurate description. According to authorities, the gunman approached the patrol car, stalked his prey, squatted a few feet away, and took dead aim at his targets.
It turns out that the gunman (who committed suicide immediately after the shooting) was a Baltimore man who travelled to New York City with the intent to shoot police officers. According to the New York Daily News, the assassin posted anti-police images on his social media account. “I’m putting wings on pigs today,” he wrote on his Instagram account. “They take 1 of ours, let’s take 2 of theirs.” He bragged about his plan to kill police officers in retribution for the deaths of Michael Brown in Ferguson, Mo., and Eric Garner in Staten Island, NY, which (like the protest movement) he blamed on the police. The gunman made no secret of the fact that his actions were linked to the protest movement of recent weeks.
We should be clear that the causes of this atrocity go beyond a “lack of civility” and “rhetorical excesses” in certain liberal and left wing circles. The problem goes deeper. There has been a concerted campaign in these circles to promote bristling hatred against those who are perceived to be opponents, whether conservatives, Republicans, the military, or (now) police officers. Liberals believe that they are right on all the major issues of the day, and that therefore opponents have no rights they are obliged to respect. The extremist rhetoric that saturates university campuses and the television airwaves at places like CNN and MSNBC lies behind the rising tide of violence and lawlessness.
Where’s that toxic rhetoric coming from? Let’s not make a false pretense of balance as if both sides are responsible. The extremist rhetoric is coming, overwhelmingly, from the left: from Al Sharpton and various left wing activists and publications that have exploited the incidents in Ferguson and Staten Island for misguided ideological goals. Mayor de Blasio, The New York Times, CNN, President Obama, and other prominent liberal figures have contributed to the problem by failing to call out the extremists for their violent rhetoric.
Some have rushed to judgment to blame these prominent leaders and media outlets for this horrible event. That is going too far. They cannot be blamed for the act of a demented individual. They are as sorry as anyone else that this has happened. But we can hold them accountable for contributing to a climate of hate that possibly spurred an unstable individual to act on his twisted beliefs. They might have cooled down the situation, but never tried to do so.
If this event promotes some genuine soul-searching, it could mark an important turning point in our culture. If it doesn’t, Saturday’s atrocity will be just the beginning of an ongoing cycle of violence, retaliation, and recriminations.