In the wake of the deaths, Attorney General Eric Holder released this statement that “our nation must always honor the valor — and the sacrifices — of all law enforcement officers with a steadfast commitment to keeping them safe.” Hindsight is always 20/20, so I want to look prospectively at seven specific steps the attorney general can — and should — take now to help restore confidence in law enforcement and thus honor that “steadfast commitment” to making officers as safe as possible.
1. Send 30 representatives from the administration to the officers’ funerals.
Holder should send 30 representatives to the slain officers’ funerals. Why 30? Symbols matter here. The administration sent three representatives to Brown’s funeral. That choice was (to put it mildly) a curious one. To give Holder and the administration the benefit of the doubt, the circumstances back in August were not entirely clear. But now the facts are in – including reliable physical evidence and credible eyewitness testimony — demonstrating that Brown assaulted a police officer and likely tried to kill him … twice. I hope the administration regrets sending official representatives to the funeral of young man who may well have attempted to murder a police officer. While all deaths are tragic, a vast difference exists between the death of a robber charging a law enforcement officer and the deaths of two police officers gunned down in the line of duty while monitoring a dangerous neighborhood. The attorney general should make that difference clear by sending ten-fold the number of representatives to Officers Wenjian Liu and Rafael Ramos’s funerals.
Read More at the Washington Post
