San Jose pig union asserts lack of outrage for rising officer killings...

stringer bell · November 2016

http://www.mercurynews.com/2016/11/23/video-san-jose-police-union-asserts-lack-of-outrage-for-rising-officer-killings/

San Jose police union asserts lack of outrage for rising officer killings

SAN JOSE — Heading into the holiday weekend, the San Jose police union has produced a provocative online video calling attention to a national rise in officer killings over the past year and contends a lack of outrage over the troubling trend.

Titled “When did shooting at cops become OK?”, the minute-long video posted to YouTube and formally released early Wednesday cites that 56 police officers in the United States have been shot to death so far in 2016, marking a 70 percent rise in such killings over the same period in 2015.

As recently as Sunday, a San Antonio police officer was shot and killed in an apparent ambush. In the greater Bay Area, Stanislaus County Sheriff’s Deputy Dennis Wallace was fatally shot Nov. 13 by an auto-theft suspect in Hughson, a city about 10 miles southeast of Modesto.

Backed by a somber piano track, the video displays title cards with the phrases “Where is the outrage” and “Where are the protests?” interspersed with news footage referencing a violent Nov. 13 encounter where an alleged gang member shot at two gang-enforcement officers at close range in East San Jose. The officers were not hit, and the suspected shooter was arrested four days later.

The video fades out with the message “The San Jose Police Officers’ Association believes” followed by the oft-recited slogans “All Lives Matter” and “Blue Lives Matter.”

The phrases during the video and at the ending combine to form an implied push-back to national protests over the killings of unarmed black men by police dating back to the 2014 death of Michael Brown in Ferguson, Missouri.

That and subsequent incidents and ensuing demonstrations sparked the “Black Lives Matter” movement, which in turn spurred the creation of the “All Lives Matter” and “Blue Lives Matter” slogans by police groups and police supporters accusing the movement of unfairly vilifying police.

A spokesman for the San Jose Police Officers’ Association said the video was produced in part to remind citizens of police sacrifices as they gather for the holiday.

“Targeting police officers for murder can never become the norm if we are to remain a civilized society,” union spokesman Tom Saggau said. “Tomorrow, there will be too many empty chairs at Thanksgiving dinner tables where a cop or a sheriff should be sitting and enjoying their families and we hope that those that have been needlessly gunned down, for nothing more than wearing a uniform, will be remembered.”