Georgia Sheriff Lashes Out Against Anti-Police Rhetoric

Since the death of Michael Brown last August, police officers across the nation have been under fierce attack from the left. Because there are a handful of racist cops in the country, these liberals claim, we must completely overhaul our criminal justice system. Worse, groups like Black Lives Matter have been caught repeatedly advocating violence against cops. Those calls have been heard, leading to the deaths of officers in Illinois, New York City, and Texas.

Gwinnett County Sheriff Butch Conway has heard enough. He wrote an essay and sent it in to the Atlanta Journal Constitution this week, expressing his dismay over the current climate.

“We’ve all heard the noisy voices blaming law enforcement officers themselves for these assassinations and it sickens me,” Conway wrote. “To say that I’m angry would be an understatement. I’m angry that the fringe groups who started the culture of police hatred have widened the racial divide in our country by alleging that officer-involved shootings stem from racism. I’m angry that the controversy involving law enforcement officers has been further fueled by the news media, which seems intent on trying these cases in the court of public opinion through relentless media coverage and irresponsible reporting before the facts of a case are available.”

Confronted about his remarks the next day on a local radio station, Conway said, “I was embarrassed that I hadn’t said something sooner because I think people expect me to tell them what I think of something.”

Reacting to the essay, Black Lives Matter leader Shaun King wrote a statement calling Conway’s essay “one of the most ignorant, uninformed, and inflammatory statements from a man of his stature in law enforcement that I have ever read.”

King went on to discuss police departments under federal investigation for racism, cops who have been caught texting racial slurs to each other, and statistics that prove police fatalities are trending downward.

But this kind of argument is hardly a convincing rebuttal. The number of police departments under federal scrutiny speaks only to President Obama’s active support of this illegitimate movement. Lower police deaths speak to a less violent society in general, but they don’t address the very real problem of officers being murdered because they wear the uniform. And you can find racists in every line of work in America, including law enforcement. That doesn’t mean innocent black men are being killed with such regularity that we need to tear our entire justice system apart.

Should racist police officers be fired? Of course. Should police officers be held to a higher standard than plumbers when it comes to their racial views? Sure. And if the Black Lives Matter movement had stopped at these reasonable arguments, we wouldn’t have the problems we have today. Everyone would be in agreement, and we could get things done.

Instead, they reached well beyond the evidence and lied to the American people. The grand juries are racist. The prosecutors are racist. The laws are racist. If there are black people in prison, they are there because of racism. If there are black communities being burned to the ground by their own citizens, it’s because of racism. And anyone with the slightest shred of common sense can see through the propaganda at this point.