Time For Healing: America's Leadership Crisis

Pandering politicians, race-baiters, cop-haters and the biased media need to shut the hell up.  Their racially incendiary rhetoric has stoked the national fires of hated, distrust and hostility.  Americans need healing, reconciliation and honest dialogue based on factual evidence not raw emotion.

America's crisis began with the shooting of two African-Americans by police.  The killings were captured on amateur video, an increasing by-product of violent confrontations.  The crude footage exploded on social media, unedited and without informative context.

Unfortunately, many people jumped to conclusions based on the recordings.  The cops were guilty. However, as Americans should know by now, often the pictures capture but a snippet of the evidence. Only a thorough investigation can reveal the truth and assign liability.  

No one should know that better than President Obama, who studied law in college.  Yet there he was on national television within hours of the shootings suggesting the police were to blame.  His politically motivated statement, instead of reassuring Americans, helped ignite discord.

Black Lives Matter, a growing movement launched in 2013, took their cue from the president and launched protests.  Its founders and supporters include many involved in Occupy Wall Street, ACORN and the Freedom Road Socialist Organization.  The group has become increasingly volatile.

During the recent protests, supporters are captured on video screaming such epithets as: "Pigs in a Blanket, Fry Em Like Bacon." How exactly does that create an open discussion of legitimate racial issues?  As the nation soon witnessed, anti-police rhetoric has deadly consequences.

A heavily-armed African-American ambushed police during a Black Lives Matter demonstration in Dallas, killing five and wounding seven others. The murderer bragged to police negotiators that he wanted to kill "white people" in retribution for the two shootings earlier in the week.

How does a nation descend into this kind of violence?  When cooler heads and words were needed, the American public was whipped into a frenzy by wall-to-wall media coverage of the black killings accompanied by heated words from faux journalists and discredited experts.

There was a universal rush to judgment.  The country's tradition of assuming innocence was brushed aside by the Justice Department, President Obama and vulgar politicians eager to solidify their standing with the black community or police.  Everyone took sides. No on spoke for all Americans.

For its part, the news media sowed seeds of fear with a false narrative about white cops out to get blacks.  America's news organizations fan racial alienation by highlighting police shootings involving only black victims. Forty-six per cent of cop violence victims are white. Can you name one?

Lost in the nasty discourse are these inconvenient facts that should form the nucleus of our national discussion.

Police killings have risen an alarming 44 percent this year.  Twenty-six police officers have been killed by firearms this year.  At the same time last year, there were 18 police deaths by gunfire. Here are a few facts that don't fit the media narrative: Nearly 30 percent of the police victims were black. The most recent FBI statistics show that 40 percent of cop killers are black.  Why are more policemen and women being gunned down?  Americans need answers to that question as part of any conversation about race and police. The war on police must stop.

African-Americans represent 15 percent of the population in America's big cities, but 26 percent of the police shooting victims.  A disproportionate percentage of blacks are killed, however, the police shooters are most often not white.  Black and Hispanic cops are more likely to fire a gun at African-Americans than white officers, according to a Department of Justice Report in 2012. Another study by a University of Pennsylvania criminologist in 2015 found that black cops were 3.3 times more likely to fire a gun at a crime scene than other police.  White officers killing African-Americans represent four percent of all fatal police shootings, the Washington Post recently reported. Why are confrontations between African-Americans and police increasingly becoming more violent?  Without an answer to that question, no solution is worth serious consideration.

Crime in big cities is increasing after years of decline.  Murders have risen nine percent in America's 63 largest cities during the first three months of this year.  The statistics are part of the Violent Crime Survey released by the Major Cities Chiefs of Police.  So far this year, there have been 16,121 homicides nationwide.  In all of 2013, the country recorded 14,827 killings.  What is driving this deadly crime wave?  Crime creates more occasions for police and crooks to confront one another under tension-filled circumstances.  That's why a hike in crime matters.

In these troubled times, America needs leadership that understands what unites us rather than demagogues who preach division.  The executive director of the Fraternal Order of Police, an organization representing 330,000 officers, provided a sober assessment of national leadership.

"We'd like to see the president make one speech that speaks to everybody instead of one speech that speaks to black people as they grieve and one speech that speaks to police officers as they grieve," said Jim Pasco, the police union executive.  "We don't need two presidents, we only need one.  We need one who works to unify the United States."

Amen.