The White House insisted to Newsmax on Tuesday that President Barack Obama is fully supportive of police officers in spite of the criticism he has received following televised violence in Baltimore and Ferguson, Missouri.
At the regular briefing for reporters at the White House, Newsmax cited statistics from The Associated Press showing arrests were down 56 percent in Baltimore for the month of May while non-fatal shootings in the city were up 60 percent amid media reports that police morale there is falling.
Given these statistics, as well as those showing murders in New York rose by 15 percent in May, we asked press secretary Josh Earnest if the president, who has spoken often of problems in urban America since Ferguson and Baltimore, will make a strong statement about law enforcement officers and the current situation.
"I think anybody who has listened to the president over the last several months has heard the president on a number of occasions talk about the important work that local police officers do in communities all across the country," Earnest told us.
"These are men and women who, on a daily basis, put on the police uniform and walk out the front door of their home prepared to put their life on the line to keep the community that they serve and protect safe.
"That is something that is worthy of our respect, and frankly, it's something that the president has praised. Individuals who are willing to make that kind of sacrifice and commitment to public safety is something that is laudable and worthy of the praise of everybody in this country from the president on down."
Earnest went to recall how Obama "had the opportunity to talk about this bravery and that commitment at the Peace Officers Memorial that he spoke at two or three weeks ago."
As for the statistics we cited showing crime on the rise in some cities, the president's top spokesman replied that he'd "hesitate to generalize about broader trends that we're seeing across the country."
But Earnest added his feeling that the trend we cited of urban crime on the rise "speaks to how important it is for law enforcement officers to build trust with the communities that they serve and protect."
"That trust only makes it more safe — it creates conditions that allow law enforcement officers to do their jobs more safely, but it also makes it more effective in fighting crime if they know that they can work in partnership and in trust with members of the community.
"This is something that the President's Task Force on 21st Century Policing has spent a lot of time looking at," Earnest said. "And there are a variety of best practices that they have put forward that we've seen law enforcement agencies adopt to try to address this kind of situation in communities across the country."
John Gizzi is chief political columnist and White House correspondent for Newsmax.
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