In an interview with “60 Minutes,” FBI Director Christopher Wray didn’t seem to follow the left-wing script when he said a war on police officers is taking a tragic toll on law enforcement agencies in the U.S.
“Violence against law enforcement in this country is one of the biggest phenomenas that I think doesn't get enough attention,” Wray told correspondent Scott Pelley. “Last year, officers were being killed at a rate of almost one every five days.”
A total of 73 law enforcement officers were killed in the line of duty in 2021.
Wray went on to point out many of those fallen officers were gunned down in cold blood while on patrol or sitting in a police cruiser, not in a shootout with bank robbers or an undercover sting with drug dealers.
“They were killed because they were police officers,” Pelley said.
"Right," Wray replied. "Wearing the badge shouldn't make you a target.”
Reacting to Wray’s interview, Randy Sutton of The Wounded Blue says the blame for fallen officers lies with far-left Democrats and, in particular, their "Defund the Police" mantra that began in 2020. That effort did not literally occur despite left-wing activists who demanded it, but mayors and city councils in more than two dozen major cities did punish their own police departments with slashed budgets, which reduced the number of officers on the streets.
“Our young people need to be reached, not policed,” Bill DeBlasio, New York City’s now-former mayor, said after $1 billion was moved from the police department to fund youth and social services.
“We should all agree: The answer is not to defund the police,” President Joe Biden, probably panicking over midterm elections, stated in his State of the Union address. “The answer is to fund the police. Fund them. Fund them.”
Even though the FBI director was pointing out the terrible toll police officers are paying, Sutton tells AFN, it appears no one else in the Democratic Party is admitting what their own policy has done.
“[Wray] didn't mention [Black Lives Matter] by name, and I think he could've, of course, been a little more passionate,” Sutton says. “But maybe that's not his style. He gave some great statistical information.”
