If tragedy is supposed to reveal a person's ability to lead, both President Obama and his would-be successor, Hillary Clinton, failed miserably in the wake of the slaughter of five police officers in Dallas
Investor’s Business Daily
July 11, 2016
After vilifying cops for being racist just hours before the Dallas shootings began, Obama on Sunday turned around warned against "those of us who ... attack police officers."
But the reason he gave is that these attacks "are doing a disservice to the cause" of criminal justice reform. In other words, attacking the police as racist will make it harder for him and his fellow Democrats to root out all those racist cops.
That's not exactly a ringing endorsement of those who put their lives on the line every day to maintain law and order.
While Obama is certain that racism is behind police shootings of black people — a claim that a new study debunks — he pleads ignorance about why Micah Xavier Johnson carried out his murderous rampage.
"I think it's very hard to untangle the motives of this shooter," he said on Saturday. Apparently, motives are only clear when they fit Obama's political narrative.
The police have had enough, and at long last are starting to blast Obama's rhetoric. "We need (a president) who works to unify the United States," said Jim Pasco, executive director of the Fraternal Order of Police.
William Johnson, executive director of the National Association of Police Organizations was far less diplomatic, saying Obama "has contributed to a climate where these things can happen. This president and his administration absolutely do not have our back and make our jobs more dangerous."
If Obama's response was bad, Clinton's was even worse.
On CNN Friday, Clinton essentially blamed the police for the fact that five of them were killed the day before because blacks feel as if they have to "protect themselves" from the police.
Later that same day, Clinton followed up her un-presidential vilification of the police by telling an audience that "we cannot, we must not vilify police officers."
The reason Obama and Clinton are having such difficulty dealing with the Dallas shooting is that they've both spent years shouting racism any time a cop shoots a black person. Now that someone has acted on this inflammatory rhetoric, they're awkwardly trying to back pedal.
Worse still, it appears that the entire narrative about racist cops killing blacks is wrong.
A new study, published by the prestigious National Bureau of Economic Research, found "no evidence of racial discrimination in officer-involved shootings." The study, by Harvard economics professor Roland Fryer Jr., studied data from three major cities.
In fact, Fryer found that in Houston, "blacks are 23.8% less likely to be shot at by police relative to whites. Hispanics are 8.5% less likely."
Fryer did find racial disparities in the use of nonlethal force — handcuffs, pepper spray, drawing a weapon, etc. -- but noted that some of that disappeared when the interactions were considered in context. In any case, he notes that "the probability that any civilian is subjected to such treatment is small."
Police drew their weapons in just 0.26% of interactions with civilians and drew a baton only 0.02% of the time.
"These are rare events," he says.
What does it say about political leaders who are willing to exaggerate a problem and whip up racial hostilities for political gain, and then pretend that their own rhetoric has nothing to do with the resulting violence?
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