A leading voice for the nation’s police officers who has bluntly challenged President Obama for his lack of support for police, issued a truly blunt assessment of how police felt about Obama leaving 0ffice, snapping, “No one is sorry to see this guy go.”
Speaking to The Blaze, William J. Johnson, executive director of the National Association of Police Organizations, said Johnson said Obama’s public statements have only offered “lip service” to the idea that targeting police officers is wrong, while he has demonstrated repeated support for groups that blame police for incidents involving minorities.
Johnson added that Obama’s actions have demoralized police, leading to a reticence among officers to become actively engaged with communities for fear of being unjustly accused. He offered this aphorism: “Don’t get involved, smile, wave, drive by.”
Johnson continued, “He knows what he’s doing. He’s aware who his audience is. In terms of violence against police, his audience was not police or survivors, his audience was leaders of Black Lives Matter, protesters and agitators. … He sent a clear message: ‘I’m on your side.’”
Johnson said the first time it became clear that Obama would become divisive was the 2009 arrest of black Harvard professor and scholar Henry Louis Gates Jr., when Obama pontificated:
I don’t know, not having been there and not seeing all the facts, what role race played in that. But I think it’s fair to say, number one, any of us would be pretty angry; number two, that the Cambridge police acted stupidly in arresting somebody when there was already proof that they were in their own home, and, number three, what I think we know separate and apart from this incident is that there’s a long history in this country of African-Americans and Latinos being stopped by law enforcement disproportionately.
Five years later, after the 2014 fatal shooting of 18-year-old black man Michael Brown by officer Darren Wilson in Ferguson, Missouri, Obama was at it again—telling the Congressional Black Caucus Foundation: “Too many young men of color feel targeted by law enforcement. Guilty of walking while black, driving while black, judged by stereotypes that fuel fear and resentment and hopelessness.”
Even though a grand jury later cleared Wilson, as Johnson pointed out, Attorney General Holder and Obama refused to publicize that fact, alienating police further.
A further instance of Obama’s abandonment of police occurred after five Dallas police officers were fatally shot during a protest last July; Johnson told Fox News that Obama had “become the Neville Chamberlain of this war on cops . . . (his) disarming of police, taking away defensive gear like bullet-proof vests and helmets and bullet-proof cars, and at the same time, appeasing very violent movements.”
That got Obama’s attention; Obama summoned him to the White House; where he “kind of got chewed out” by Obama in the Roosevelt Room, as Obama vented, “I’m not responsible for the war on cops.” When Obama asked how he should have responded differently, Johnson brought up Obama and holder’s acrtions vis-à-vis Ferguson.
That mattered little to Obama; the very next day Obama spoke during a memorial service for the slain Dallas officers, and still harped on the supposed racism of police, saying, “And while some suffer far more under racism’s burden, some feel to a far greater extent discrimination’s sting. Although most of us do our best to guard against it and teach our children better, none of us is entirely innocent,” No institution is entirely immune. And that includes our police departments. We know this.”
“The Neville Chamberlain of this war on cops.”
William J. Johnson, executive director of the National Association of Police Organizations
Johnson slammed Obama, asserting, “Even now just can’t support police? What the hell is he talking about? How does that fit in?” He called Obama’s statements “appalling” and “beyond tasteless” and bordering “almost on cruelty,” adding, “there’s a time and place.”
Johnson concluded, “My dad was a cop, my grandfather was a cop,” then added of current police officers, “They’re telling their kids, ‘It’s not worth it.’”