Rich Lowry details for National Review Online readers a disturbing story involving the response to violence against police.
The attempted assassination of two Los Angeles County deputies, caught on a security video, is chilling and enraging enough.
A man walks up to the parked black-and-white cruiser in Compton, south of downtown L.A., and fires point-blank through the passenger window, then he runs away. The stricken officers manage to stagger out of the vehicle and call for assistance. They are whisked away to the hospital for emergency surgery (and are now, thankfully, recovering).
The attack was a heinous and cowardly act, but what came afterward was, if obviously much less serious, infuriating in its own right.
A black man who had witnessed the Compton shooting or its immediate aftermath narrates what has happened on video, his voice filled with joy and excitement. Using a slang term for shooting someone, he exults, “N?***a just aired the police out, n?***?as!”
“It goes down in Compton!” he continues, with the cruiser and the wounded officers in the background. “Oh, two sheriffs shot in the face!”
Not one of the several people on the sidewalk near the amateur videographer shows the slightest inclination to help the officers. In fact, shouts can be heard of, “No justice, no peace,” which would seem grotesquely inappropriate — except the go-to slogan of Black Lives Matter and other hard-Left protesters has always carried the threat of violence.
The L.A. shooter has yet to be apprehended, and his motive is unknown. Perhaps the attack was completely random, or the attacker is mentally ill. …
… But there is no getting around the sentiment of the bystanders or the rabble that showed up, disgracefully, at the hospital where the officers were taken, shouting abuse at the police: “Oink, oink,” “Y’all going to die one by one.”