Police Nationwide in Uproar

Friday’s execution-style ambush of a Texas sheriff’s deputy, Darren H. Goforth, hit home particularly hard for Tony Nolfe, a lieutenant at the patrol division of the Baldwin County Sheriff’s Office in Alabama.

Nolfe shares a profession with Goforth, who was fatally shot in the back of the head while he was putting gas into his patrol car in Houston. Nolfe is of similar age and, like Goforth, has two school-age children, a boy and a girl.

“I do think this (current) rhetoric has made things more dangerous.”

Law enforcement officers, in addition to the normal dangers of the job, have faced an onslaught of criticism this past year over alleged excesses in their relations with citizens and — in extreme cases — open calls for violence.

“I do think this rhetoric has made it more dangerous,” said Nolfe, who also identifies with a state trooper in Louisiana who was fatally shot after stopping on Aug. 23 to aid a motorist whose truck was stuck in a ditch. The slain deputy’s son and Nolfe’s own boy have the same name.

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“This whole new thing with all this rhetoric, and this racial divide, and this political divide that’s been harvested artificially, has made it more dangerous,” said Nolfe.

Goforth’s brutal and sudden death has sparked anger from law enforcement officers and police organizations who are frustrated by the mute response of President Barack Obama, who, in contrast, has been outspoken about several high-profile deaths of young black men at the hands of police.

“The silence has been deafening,” said Bill Johnson, executive director of the Alexandria, Virginia-based National Association of Police Organizations.

Milwaukee County Sheriff David Clarke, in an appearance on Fox News, said anti-police broadsides from groups like Black Lives Matters has made it “open season” on law enforcement officers.

The anti-police sentiment has reached a fever pitch in some areas. Over the weekend, marchers at the Minnesota State Fair chanted, “Pigs in a blanket, fry ’em like bacon.”

“I’m tired of people calling these black activists,” he said. “They’re not black activists.”

Chuck Canterbury, national president of the Fraternal Order of Police, renewed his call to expand federal hate crime laws to include those who target law enforcement officers.

“In 2009, Congress saw a need to expand the law to protect a group of our fellow citizens who we suspected were being targeted as victims of violence,” Canterbury said in a statement. “In the last few years, ambush attacks aimed to kill or injure law enforcement officers have risen dramatically. Our officers deserve this same level of protection.”

The Black Lives Matter movement sprung from last year’s shooting death of teenager Michael Brown in Ferguson, Missouri. Nolfe said he was aggravated by the fact that it “all started with what has proven to be a lie,” a reference to the now-discredited narrative that Brown was shot with his hands in the air while backing away from the officer.

The anti-police sentiment has reached a fever pitch in some areas. Over the weekend, marchers at the Minnesota State Fair chanted, “Pigs in a blanket, fry ’em like bacon.”

Johnson said such bombast helps create an atmosphere in which taking shots at police officers is considered acceptable.

Do Black Lives Matter activists speak for most African-Americans? A Gallup poll conducted in July appears to show they do not.

“I think (the protesters) bear much responsibility for that. They’ll try to shirk it,” said Johnson. “It’s a farce to call these riots, these demonstrations, peaceful protests.”

Nolfe said he worries most about borderline personalities who feel they have been wronged by the police. He said they can be emboldened by hearing people shout epithets at police and public officials sympathizing with people who have initiated violent confrontations.

According to the Officer Down Memorial Page, which tracks officer deaths, the 82 officers who have died in the line of duty so far this year is slightly off the pace from last year, when a total of 133 officers died.

The latest killing occurred Tuesday, when an officer was gunned down in a suburb of Chicago.

“The good people in a community should want us there.”

To police, though, things feel far more dangerous. Goforth, who was simply pumping gas, had no warning or chance. He appears to have had no connection to the man who is charged in his death, Shannon Miles. The same goes for New York City Police detectives Rafael Ramos and Wenjian Liu, who were sitting in a patrol car on Dec. 20 when they were shot.

“It’s deliberate,” Johnson said. “It’s not random.”

The notion that people could be targeting law enforcement officers simply because of their uniforms and badges raises a new level of anxiety beyond the normal stress of responding to hostile environments, Nolfe said.

“If I go to a robbery, I know what I’m going to,” he said. “If I go to a domestic (incident), I know what I’m going to.”

Do Black Lives Matter activists speak for most African-Americans? A Gallup poll in July appears to show they do not. Despite a racial gap in perceptions of how police treat black people, only 10 percent of African-American respondents indicated they wanted a smaller police presence in their neighborhoods.

Nolfe said he worries the hostile atmosphere could lead some officers to either become more aggressive or pull back from minority areas and be less proactive.

“The good people in a community should want us there,” he said.

This article has been updated.