A police officer has been attacked in an attempted ambush-style shooting, this time in Phoenix, Arizona.
A vehicle pulled up to an unmarked car where an Arizona Department of Public Safety (DPS) officer sat, Fox News reports. The officer was in uniform, clearly identifiable as a member of law enforcement, when the 17-year old suspect aimed an assault rifle at him.
“Had the trooper not had the wherewithal and the ability to quickly exit his vehicle and engage the suspect, undoubtedly he would have been shot or killed,” DPS Director Col. Heston Silbert said.
The suspected shooter, 17-year-old Luis German Espinoza Acuna, was caught. The driver of the car is being sought by police as an accomplice.
On the other side of the country, the New York Post reports on a shooting attack at the home of two Camden County, New Jersey, police officers.
“The husband-and-wife cops and their 10-day-old girl escaped injury when six rounds ripped into their house in Camden, New Jersey—with two slugs tearing through the front door,” Camden County Police Chief Joseph Wysocki told the press.
“The possibility that someone may have targeted law enforcement causes a true threat to the citizens of Camden,” FBI Special Agent Michael Driscoll stated.
“It makes me really mad because they’re good people,” one of the neighbors of the police in Camden told the New York Post. “It’s scary.”
Other neighbors expressed shock at the audacity of the act and said they are concerned about the safety of their neighborhood. Neighbors noted the presence of a baby during the attack, with one describing the shooting as “cruel.”
The investigation indicates three culprits: a driver and two gunmen. None have been identified yet.
The Phoenix and Camden police-targeting incidents arose in the wake of the recent ambush attack of two Los Angeles officers in Compton. In Los Angeles, rioters were positioned at the entrance of the hospital to block the emergency crews from gaining access for the two severely wounded officers. The timing indicated a coordinated plan, with rioters chanting, “We hope they die,” The Wall Street Journal reports.
“What people have not realized, and now we are hearing articulated, is that the motive is not to defund the police but to kill the police,” retired police sergeant John Bodde told Budget & Tax News. “The attack on the police officers in L.A. was coordinated.
“If police officers are being openly murdered—and the intent to kill is highlighted by blocking emergency rooms to prevent treatment—how on Earth would a citizen feel safe in their home?” Bodde said. “What, who will stop this evil if the blue line fails?”
Since the rioting and violence began, police have been “shot, stabbed, run over and hit by objects,” writes Willis Krumholz for The Federalist. Krumholz created a list of the multiple police officers injured or killed during rioting, noting that few of these incidents have been reported in the mainstream media. Victims include a 29-year-old Las Vegas officer shot in the back of the head while struggling with a protester; three Buffalo law enforcement officers hit by a car, with two sustaining serious injuries; an officer injured when struck by a brick thrown by a rioter in Albany, New York; and many more.
“The protests have often devolved into violent and destructive riots driven by anti-police sentiment, with dozens of arrests made in Portland in just the past two weeks for felony rioting, felony assault, reckless endangerment, and more,” writes Ashley Oliver for Breitbart.
For months, rioters have been allowed to throw bottles, bricks, and fireworks at police with minimal consequences, which has emboldened criminals to progress to murderous attacks. Elected officials and city leaders have widely joined in the anti-police rhetoric, giving potential assailants a perceived justification for attacks and further hope that they will get away with them.
“When individuals in positions of influence, such as politicians and other well-known persons, are advocating violence, there should be no surprise that those who are waiting for an excuse will move from fantasy to action,” retired police SWAT Sergeant Steve Rodriguez told Budget & Tax News. “If police are equated to terrorists, fascists, Nazis, etc., then the unhinged have their justification to murder.”
After the Compton shooting, Lynwood City Manager Jose Ometeotl was put on paid administrative leave for posting the phrase “chickens come home to roost” on Twitter, Fox News reports.
A BLM protestor in Portland told a crowd of protestors that cops were “filthy, disgusting, animals,” declared “war” against the police, and told the mob to “get armored up” and “take the streets back,” the New York Post reports. The woman referred to the crowd as “comrades” and announced that she will “shoot back” at the police.
Sen. Ed Markey (D-MA) has called for completely disarming the police, Breitbart reports. Instead of offering support for the police under fire, Markey is calling for banning resources such as tear gas, rubber and plastic bullets, and beanbags.
Portland Mayor Ted Wheeler, also a Democrat, has refused to express support for embattled officers in his city. Instead, Wheeler banned the police use of tear gas. Violence and vandalism continue unabated in that city. Portland police told The Wall Street Journal they are “handcuffed by city leaders and a prosecutor who has been reluctant to file charges.”
Minneapolis City Council members moved to eliminate the police department and replace law enforcement officers with “violence interrupters.” Two months later, the city has documented a surge in crime, Fox News reports. Community members are asking, “Where are the police?” when their calls go unanswered. The city has experienced a rapid increase in assaults, robberies, homicides, property crimes, and arson.
Minneapolis residents may have even more worries ahead. Former FBI Agent Bill Nicholson tells Budget & Tax News local police officers play a critical role in FBI cases.
“I supervised a gang task force, and I can tell you clearly, I could not have done my job without state and local police,” Nicholson said.
State and local politicians are cynically leaving their cities unprotected in order to threaten them with greater violence if they do not vote for progressive politicians, an openly racist strategy, Kevin Brock, a former assistant director of intelligence for the FBI, writes in The Hill.
“The sheer insane illogic of defunding the police indicates that something else is going on here,” writes Brock. “Urban leaders’ tolerance of violent Marxist/anarchist rioters belies their leftist sympathies with the destructive mob. Artificially created chaos always has been the totalitarian recipe for justifying state control of everything. Allowing violence and destruction a long leash is a sickening strategy—but it’s a strategy, plain and simple.”
“[I]t is fair to ask whether today’s ultra-left Democrats are simply implementing new forms of racist policies from a different angle,” Brock writes.
