Over the weekend, New Jersey governor and Republican presidential candidate Chris Christie forcefully—and shamefully—declared that the Black Lives Matter movement encourages the killing of police officers, joining the likes of Fox News in smearing the activists and organizations involved.
Appearing on CBS’s Face the Nation on Sunday, Christie was responding to host John Dickerson, who asked whether or not he agreed with FBI Director James B. Comey’s suggestion that increased calls for police accountability have made police officers less aggressive in doing their job of curbing crime. Comey made the comments during a speech last Friday at the University of Chicago Law School.
Back in August, hundreds of Minnesota protestors descended on the annual state fair to call attention to what organizers said were political and social injustices in addition to police brutality. During the march to the Minnesota State Fairgrounds some protestors were heard saying, “Pigs in a blanket, fry ’em like bacon.”
At the time, the Grand Forks Herald reported that the chant in question was one of many during the day and that it only lasted about 30 seconds. The story even quoted a police escort for the protestors as saying that “Everybody likes bacon.”
Fox News was quick to label Black Lives Matter as a "murder movement" and as recently as Friday, Fox host Bill O’Reilly cut the microphone of guest Keith Boykin once Boykin refused to agree that the movement “wants cops dead.” And prior to this, a Fox affiliate in Baltimore actually edited a protest chant to say “kill a cop” last December.
Christie continued the interview by saying that he would be a president who would back up law enforcement and that bad police officers need to be prosecuted. “Bad lawyers, bad doctors, and bad engineers, they all need to be prosecuted when they do something wrong,” he said.
It would be nice if such a thing happened, but lawyers, doctors, and engineers are not given sanction by society to use deadly force as part of their jobs. That's what Black Lives Matter has been calling attention to: Police officers are not held to account when they take a civilian’s life.
Moreover, few internal investigations and district attorneys appear willing to even countenance the possibility that officers did something wrong, including committing crimes while on duty.
According to Reuters, 12 police officers have been charged with murder or manslaughter this year due to police shootings … and that’s the highest level in a decade. This number does not, however, include the six Baltimore police officers charged in the April death of Freddie Gray.
Police have killed close to 1,000 people in the U.S. this year, with a little more than two months remaining until 2016. It's a very real possibility that a majority of the officers involved in these deaths will not be held accountable.
Both Gov. Christie and Fox News should be ashamed.
CORRECTION: The original post stated Gov. Christie appeared on CBS's Meet the Press over the weekend. 10:59 p.m. Pacific.
