WALLACE: And hello again from Fox News in Washington.
Like a lot of people, we noticed a deeply disturbing trend this week. A policeman gunned down north of Chicago became the 24th law enforcement officer murdered in the line of duty this year. Since Ferguson last August, 44 officers have been shot and killed.
And this comes at a time of growing anti-police rhetoric and a spike in murders in some of our biggest cities.
We're joined today by two leaders in law enforcement. Philadelphia Police Commissioner Charles Ramsey and Milwaukee Police Chief Edward Flynn.
Chief Flynn, you said recently, every cop in America is looking over his shoulder and they don't feel that America has their back. Is that contributing to this rash of police shootings?
EDWARD FLYNN, MILWAUKEE POLICE CHIEF: I think we have to look at a broader context. I certainly think it's an element. A number of things have happened. I’m wondering as we look at both the police shooting phenomenon and the increase in homicides in our major cities, you can't disaggregate these two phenomenon. And I think there's a number of variables at work that we might be able to discuss later that have to do with us being at some sort of tipping point.
We're not sure if we've got a spike or a real tipping point and a change phenomenon. But there are some concerning issues. And one of them is the relentless propaganda war being waged against American police officers by our network television stations. It’s been most distressing to watch them try to link six or eight questionable video recordings of police misconduct and turn that into a national narrative of what the state of police community relations are. It's a false construct, but it is a dangerous one.
First of all, there is no spike or tipping point.
The fact is that there are less police officers being murdered than there was just a few years ago:
A series of high-profile shootings of unarmed black men by police officers over the past year have highlighted racial tensions and disparities in policing. But there is no recent upward trend in the killing of police officers, according to data collected by the Officer Down Memorial Page, which tracks police deaths.
In 2011, the number of police deaths in line of duty caused by gunfire or stabbing totaled 70. That number dropped to 53 in 2012 and 33 in 2013, before rising to 47 in 2014. Thus far in 2015, 24 officers have been killed by gunfire or stabbing, on pace for a lower number than in 2014.
It is also very disappointing to hear Flynn call the videos - some taken from the officers' own cameras - as questionable.
Who are you gonna believe, those with an agenda or your lying eyes?
In a way, it's not surprising to see Flynn feed into this lie. The Milwaukee Police Department has had their share of issues of wrongful deaths of black men, including Derek Williams, who was allowed to die in the back of a police cruiser, and Dontre Hamilton, who was shot 14 times for sleeping on a park bench. No charges were ever issued in either case.
What is really upsetting to me is that I had considered Flynn to be better than that. But then again, he might have seemed that way because the other top cop in Milwaukee is the utterly insane Milwaukee County Sheriff David Clarke. Most people would seem at least halfway decent compared to that clown.
