Christie, citing tenure as U.S. attorney, seeks to make inroads on crime issue

In his latest presidential pitch, Gov. Christie is pledging to restore "law and order," drawing on recent crimes and killings of police to accuse President Obama of encouraging "lawlessness."

Alleging that Obama hasn't adequately responded to killings of police officers, Christie has described police as being "hunted." He has gone on the attack over an uptick in homicides in New York, deeming the city "less safe," blasting "liberal policies," and endorsing a return to stop-and-frisk to "empower" officers - after a federal judge in 2013 ruled that the city's tactics violated the constitutional rights of minorities.

He has laced his comments with references to his tenure as New Jersey's U.S. attorney, a resumé that distinguishes him from Republican rivals also striking a pro-law enforcement tone amid a national debate over race and policing.

"This type of campaign would not have worked in 2012 because crime was not an issue," Republican pollster Frank Luntz said. But he said conservatives were worried about crime "and they want someone to stop it dead in its tracks."

The New York Times in August reported a rise in homicides in "at least" 35 cities, including Philadelphia. But experts also note a long-term decline in violent crime.

"The available evidence is overwhelming" that America has been getting safer over recent decades, said John Roman, senior fellow in the Justice Policy Center at the Urban Institute. Increases in violence in some cities still don't compare to crime levels 25 years ago, he said.

Though homicides are up, New York City officials have touted this summer as the city's safest in 20 years. Tuesday on MSNBC's Morning Joe, Mayor Bill de Blasio said that crime was down "almost 5 percent compared to last year" and that while the city had 10 more homicides this year than last, 2014 saw "the lowest number of murders in 50 years."

Appearing on the show after de Blasio, Christie responded that he was "just stunned, as are most people in this area," by the "safest summer" label, pointing to the homicide increase. "It's the liberal policies in this city that have led to the lawlessness that's been encouraged by the president of the United States, and, I'm telling you, people in this country are getting more and more fed up," he said.

New York Police Commissioner Bill Bratton rebuked Christie in a television interview, saying the governor "made a bit of a fool of himself," and suggested that Christie was trying to deflect attention from the resignation of the United Airlines CEO in apparent fallout from a federal investigation into the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey.

Christie also has addressed killings of police officers. On Fox and Friends on Tuesday, an interviewer asked Christie about "this war on our cops," citing recent shootings.

"This is the president's problem because he has not allowed law and order to be the rule of the day in the United States. Lawlessness has been the rule of the day," Christie said, citing cities that don't cooperate with federal immigration officials and lack of enforcement of federal drug laws in states that have legalized recreational marijuana.

"Now the president says little or nothing about these issues where police officers are being hunted," Christie said.

Other Republican presidential candidates have linked Obama to killings of police. In a column last week on the conservative website Hot Air, Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker described "a disturbing trend of police officers being murdered on the job" - pointing to the killings of a Texas sheriff's deputy and an Illinois police lieutenant - and said that "in the last six years under President Obama, we've seen a rise in antipolice rhetoric. Instead of hope and change, we've seen racial tensions worsen and a tendency to use law enforcement as a scapegoat."

Texas Sen. Ted Cruz, addressing reporters last week in New Hampshire, said that police across the country were "feeling the assault from the president" and that "it's endangering all of our safety and security," according to news reports.

Firearms-related fatalities of law enforcement officers are down to 26 so far this year compared with 34 the same period in 2014, according to the National Law Enforcement Officers Memorial Fund. Traffic-related fatalities of officers are up, from 28 to 38, as are fatalities from other causes, from 15 to 21.

Since 2009, the number of annual law enforcement fatalities has fluctuated, ranging from 107 to 171.

In a Wall Street Journal commentary last spring, Heather MacDonald, a fellow at the conservative Manhattan Institute, pointed to "a handful of highly publicized deaths of unarmed black men" and subsequent riots and protests as a potential cause of increases in violence.

"The silence of the president of the United States on this increases the danger to police officers across the country," Christie said in a radio interview last week with Hugh Hewitt.

In a statement after the Aug. 28 execution-style killing of Texas sheriff's deputy Darren Goforth, Obama said that "targeting police officers is completely unacceptable - an affront to civilized society."

While a president can use the bully pulpit, in terms of policies at the local level, "the president can actually do very little about crime," Roman said - apart from taking control of local law enforcement agencies.

Christie has promoted the decision to replace Camden's city police force with a county-run division in 2012, and the subsequent drop in homicides - from a record high in a year when the police force had been slashed.

He also has praised a new focus on community policing.

Obama "needs to say to law enforcement officers as I did when I was the chief federal law enforcement officer in New Jersey . . . that I expected of every agent under my charge that they would execute the law with fairness and justice to everyone in my state," Christie said.

While Christie's background as U.S. attorney is unique in the crowded GOP presidential field, he needs an entrée to raise that resumé point, said Ben Dworkin, director of the Rebovich Institute for New Jersey Politics at Rider University.

"In order to make his law enforcement experience relevant to voters, he needs to make them start thinking about lawlessness," Dworkin said.

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