Commentary: Officials, media should condemn violent rhetoric of anti-cop movement

By Joseph J. DeFelice

A "Weekend of Rage" against the police rocked Philadelphia following the unprecedented assassination of five police officers ambushed while protecting the lives of Black Lives Matter protesters in Dallas.

During the Saturday night protest, which was captured in a 40-minute video by the Fishtown Spirit of the Riverwards newspaper, speakers jeered at police officers outside the 24/25th Police District in North Philadelphia. They celebrated the black shooter in Dallas who "wanted to kill white people, especially white officers," and called for more of the same: "This is the face of fear"; "That's what happened in Dallas . . . they did something"; "Philadelphia is Dallas"; and "Dallas is the point!" And that's just the first four minutes of the video.

As Dallas reeled from the targeted attacks - and as police officers across the country prepared for more of them - organizers of Black Lives Matter and related groups did little to dispel the suspicion that their organizations have more than peaceful protest in mind. They issued a statement denying any culpability, despite incendiary rhetoric at previous protests such as "Pigs in blankets, fry 'em like bacon" and "What do we want? Dead cops! When do we want them? Now!"

Last weekend, evidence that Black Lives Matter is "targeting the brutal system of policing, not individual police," as they have stated, was in short supply in Philadelphia. Throughout the video, protesters pick out specific officers - particularly black officers - and savage them as ugly, as race traitors, and as murderers.

Given that kind of hate speech, it's clear to many why an unstable man was whipped into such a fury that he chose to take the lives of five officers and maim seven others. This is a natural extension of a movement that has relied on blanket generalizations and the dehumanization of cops to support the idea that all police - even those led by black commissioners, like Philadelphia's and Dallas' - are members of a monolithically racist and oppressive institution.

Dehumanizing and incendiary language, such as "No good cops in a racist system" - the chant of protesters moving down Market Street in Center City last weekend - makes it easy for the lunatics that exist at the fringe of every political movement to resort to violence. Protesters who scream at our police, compare them to pigs, and end their "rally" with a telling promise - "When this country goes down in flames, you're going down with it" - are responsible for any violence that follows.

What was the response from the city's political establishment, which has come to fear this movement? Largely silence and appeasement. Mayor Kenney said we should "listen and be willing to hear one another" - a statement that would have been better delivered to protesters in front of the men and women in uniform on Saturday night. Meanwhile, Kenney shields the protesters who are snarling traffic for Philadelphians of all races with a fictitious rendering of their "constitutional rights" to ruin commutes and put people's jobs in jeopardy.

One of the mayor's allies on Council, Helen Gym, issued a milquetoast tweet about violence on both sides but saved her fire for Dallas police, whom she lambasted for committing a "street execution" in the course of trying to capture the man who had killed and maimed police officers. Political courage is in short supply in 2016, and it is clear to our police officers that we will not be hearing an unequivocal condemnation of what happened in Dallas last week - not the shootings themselves and not the rhetoric, shouted in Philly streets this weekend, that feeds this evil.

And what about the media? They are quick to blame conservatives for any act of violence that can even be loosely tied to a Republican cause. Will they be consistent and criticize those who incite the murders of police officers? If conservatives are to be blamed for abortion-clinic shootings, if the NRA is liable for a homegrown Islamist taking the lives of 49 people in an Orlando nightclub, then isn't it also true that the inflammatory rhetoric Black Lives Matter trades in has led directly to the assassinations of these five officers?

Dallas Police Chief David Brown, who is black, begged for a change in the media narrative that is "not sustainable" around police officers who "risk their lives for $40,000 a year" and are now seen as pariahs in a growing segment of our society. It used be considered a given that, though there are a few bad actors in every police force, the vast majority of officers are good and honest people who risk their lives to protect ours. The Philadelphia Republican Party still believes this is true. We ask you to stand with us and support our police force in this time of growing danger.

Joseph J. DeFelice is chairman of the Philadelphia Republican Party. josephjdefelice@gmail.com