Last week, a police officer and a college safety agent in Georgia were killed while checking out a reported domestic incident at a housing complex, the suspect then shot himself to death.
The slayings brought to at least 62 the number of law enforcement personnel nationwide who have lost their lives on the wrong end of assailants’ firearms so far this year. That’s up sharply from the 41 gunpoint killings tabulated in 2015 by the National Law Enforcement Officers Memorial Fund.
The deadly shootings, which occur, on average, more than once a week, raise a disturbing question: Is Black Lives Matter at least partly to blame?
Some in law enforcement, as well as civilians, believe, with justification, that the marked uptick in the killings of police, after years of decline, is the result of an energized Black Lives Matter movement.
“While we mourn and grieve and commit ourselves to supporting the survivors, we must also stand up and speak out against the senseless agitators and gutless politicians who helped bring about these murders,” according to a July statement put out by the National Association of Police Organizations.
