Free Republic

While many in the nation, from Oakland to New York, rally in protest over the deaths of Michael Brown and Eric Garner, I keep wondering: What about the good cops? As with our military personnel, we are often quick to hang the allegedly corrupt but slow to honor those who serve honestly to protect. According to the nonprofit National Law Enforcement Officers Memorial Fund, there are more than 900,000 of them who are serving in the United States; about 12 percent are women. The FBI reported that there were 404 incidents of "justifiable homicide" by American police in 2011. That...

Washington (AFP) - President Barack Obama vowed Monday to push for police officer safety after a Texas sheriff's deputy was gunned down from behind and shot multiple times at close range.Darren Goforth, 47, was killed late Friday in the Houston area, and local officials have blamed ramped-up rhetoric against police officers in the United States in protests against perceived police brutality.

Blast from the past. Will post another link that tells what we all knew was true.

Republican presidential contender Ted Cruz blamed President Barack Obama on Thursday for a climate of violence against police, contending the president and his administration have long vilified law enforcement. […] “There are unfortunate, tragic consequences when the president of the United States repeatedly vilifies law enforcement and when that rhetoric is amplified by the Department of Justice, when it’s amplified by politicians across this country,” Cruz said in the interview (with AP). […] The Texas senator said police have been demonized throughout Obama’s presidency. “If you look at our law enforcement, they’ve had six and a half years of vilification,...

"Gov. Scott Walker is linking a recent string of police killings to President Barack Obama,calling him a "divider-in-chief."........Walker accused Obama,who is the nation's first African-American president,of dividing the country,and said he,if elected, would bring unity as president."After years of division under President Obama,America needs a leader who will seek to unite all Americans. Instead of focusing on what divides us,we need to concentrate on what brings us together,"...."No law enforcement officer should fear to do their job the way he or she was trained to do it,and no law-abiding citizen should fear for their safety from those sworn to protect...

Over the last week, we’ve seen a disturbing trend of police officers being murdered on the job. Texas Sheriff’s Deputy Darren Goforth was killed Friday, gunned down while pumping gas for no apparent reason other than the uniform on his back. And just yesterday, in my neighboring state of Illinois, police Lt. Charles Joseph Gliniewicz was assassinated by three men, who are still on the run. This isn’t the America I grew up in or that I want my children to grow up in. When the very people responsible for keeping us safe are targeted because they are law enforcement...

Larry Elder at Real Clear Politics breathes essential statistical insight into the ongoing fight over whether or not white cops have a predilection for shooting black men: In 2012, according to the CDC, 140 blacks were killed by police. That same year 386 whites were killed by police. Over the 13-year period from 1999 to 2011, the CDC reports that 2,151 whites were killed by cops — and 1,130 blacks were killed by cops.Police shootings, nationwide, are down dramatically from what they were 20 or 30 years ago. The CDC reported that in 1968, shootings by law enforcement — called...

Sunday’s slaying of two Las Vegas policemen raises to 23 the number of law enforcement officers killed by gunfire this year, a 53 percent increase over the tally at this time last year, which is spurring concern about the influence of radical groups. After shooting the policemen at point-blank range, the husband and wife killers took the officers’ weapons and reportedly covered them with a Revolutionary War-era Gadsden flag, which depicts a coiled snake and the words “Don’t Tread on Me.” The officers’ killers — Jerad Miller and his wife, Amanda — had been at Cliven Bundy’s ranch during his...

The man wanted in this morning's shooting deaths of four Washington State police officers was granted clemency by then-Arkansas Governor Mike Huckabee nine years ago.

<p>March 12, 2003--In a housing project where bitter confrontations with the NYPD can occur daily, grandmother Gladys Taylor thought only one thing as police stormed her apartment looking for Monday's cop-slay suspects: How dare they?</p> <p>She was referring to the officers who she said busted through her door in the Stapleton Houses and tossed her 17-year-old and 29-year-old sons on the floor-not the fiends who had just executed two cops.</p>