NOTHING IS SACRED ANYMORE

Back in June of 2020, I penned a column on this site about the crisis in the law enforcement profession that I believed was not getting the attention that it deserved from the national media. It wasn’t just attention to the crisis that I was trying to put on the matter but more importantly that not enough mental health resources were being dedicated to it.

I pointed out that over the last three years, suicide was the greatest single cause of death for law enforcement officers and that comparatively, a law enforcement officer stood a better chance of taking their own life than by being killed in the line of duty by felony assault, patrol vehicle crashes and other duty-related issues. I wrote that in fact officers were two to three more times likely to kill themselves, and that it is currently the leading cause of death for officers.

I was interviewed on podcasts about this tragic phenomenon, but I could not get any interest from major cable news networks about this. With all the talk about mental health surrounding athletes these days, it is pathetic that when the people who risk their lives for the safety of their communities can’t get the same attention to their mental health from the media or mental health practitioners. We learned more about Olympic gymnast Simone Biles’ bout with the “twisties” and professional tennis player Naomi Osaka who quit the French Open, a major tennis tournament, because she feared having to talk to the media after a match. Seriously. Does the media know what a law enforcement officer deals with on a daily basis, including biased reporting in covering how they perform in use of force incidents?

But this just in, or should I call it “breaking news”. The Left leaning media has become “woke” to the issue of law enforcement suicides. The problem is that they are using attention to it for political purposes. Yes, the media once again demonstrates that their ethical elevator has no bottom floor.

Stories are now appearing on Leftist print sites and getting electronic media coverage that four Washington D.C. officers who responded to the trespassing of the US Capital on Jan. 6 have committed suicide. Is the Leftist media’s interest in the issue of blue suicide sincere? Do they really care about the crisis facing our profession? Hell no they don’t. These scoundrels are using it as a political weapon to attack former President Donald Trump. This is disgusting, but not surprising at all.

Listen to how the suicide of four DC officers is being reported. Lima, Ohio news headline says, 4 officers at “insurrection” commit suicide. CNBC headline reads, Trump Capitol riot: Police officer suicide rise to four deaths. NBCnews.com headline reads, Four officers who responded to Capitol riot have committed suicide. That reference to Trump’s Capitol riot is naked politics. One of the more despicable headlines comes from the site, Republic World. It reads, US Capitol Riots Death Toll Reaches Four After Two More Police Officers Commit Suicide. The only death that occurred on that day was when Air Force veteran Ashley Babbitt was killed by a federal officer as she climbed through a window. The site gopusa.com headline reads, Very Unusual: Four Capitol police officers have died by suicide.

Let me stop here for some comments. Very Unusual? Really? I just got through talking about this being a growing crisis in the law enforcement profession for the last three years. Where the hell has gopusa.com been?

Every one of these headlines insinuates that these suicides are directly associated with one incident. Law enforcement officers have been taking a mental beating at the hands of Leftist media sites ever since 2014 when Ferguson, Mo., Police Officer Darren Wilson lawfully saved his own life after being attacked by the thug Mike Brown who was trying to disarm the officer. Remember hands up, don’t shoot? Ever since that lie was spawned, there has been a constant barrage of hate generated against the entire profession of law enforcement. Officers have been smeared, unfairly maligned and mischaracterized as racists, bloodthirsty and that they routinely target and mistreat young black males for no reason. None of this has any basis in truth, and no data exists to prove it either. The media knows this. Cops have been spat on, had rocks and bottles thrown at them, been shot at and killed in ambush attacks. They have been the target of defunding efforts by their city mayors and councils and have been targeted for baseless criminal charges by politically active prosecutors. This has created a mass exodus of early retirements and resignations, leaving many agencies’ ranks thin.

This constant beat down has taken its toll on the mental health of our communities’ finest. It is easy to make a connection to the War on Cops as a contributing factor to an officer’s mental strain. For the Leftist media to politicize and exploit blue suicide by connecting it to a one-off incident is either a general lack of understanding about the process of suicide or they simply couldn’t resist to use it in their continued persecution of President Trump. This offends the senses. It demonstrates that the Leftist media lacks a moral compass. Classic ends justifying the means mindset.

As I indicated earlier, police suicides have been on a three-year upward trend. During this time period, neither Nancy Pelosi nor her Democrat colleagues expressed any concern or sympathy for the growing crisis of blue suicide. In fact, it was the Democratic Party that provided cop haters Black Lives Matter and Antifa a platform with which to spread their hate and contempt for law enforcement. Now we are supposed to believe that these lowlifes care about cops? Yeah, right.

Next the Democrat politicians and their propagandists in the Left-wing media will be trying to convince us that they have supported the police all along and it was President Trump who has hated law enforcement. Wait. They already are peddling that false narrative.

Sheriff David Clarke Jr. is former Sheriff of Milwaukee Co, Wisconsin, President of AmericasSheriff LLC, Board member of the Crime Research Center, President of Rise Up Wisconsin Inc and author of the book Cop Under Fire: Beyond Hashtags of Race Crime and Politics for a Better America. To learn more visit www.americassheriff.com