AUSTIN, Texas (AP) – President Barack Obama and other politicians are doing nothing to protect law enforcement officers and their families, the leader of the biggest union of Texas law enforcement officers said Wednesday.
“There is an open war against the police on the streets of America. President Obama and all the politicians in Texas and the U.S. have something in common: they’ve done absolutely nothing,” said Austin police Sgt. Todd Harrison, president of the 20,000-member Combined Law Enforcement Associations of Texas, or CLEAT, in a statement Wednesday.
He noted violence targeting law enforcement officers nationwide, from the Friday slaying of Harris County Sheriff’s Deputy Darren Goforth near Houston to the fatal shooting Tuesday of a northern Illinois police officer.
He said the nation’s leaders “should publicly denounce organizations and individuals who openly call for the assault and murder of law enforcement personnel.” He also called for legislation to make it a crime to post on social media websites death threats against law enforcement officers and calls for their deaths. He also called for making the murder of a member of a law enforcement officer’s family to be a capital crime, just as the murder of the officer is.
He said he would “rather the politicians quit coddling the anti-police crowd” as they did when the Texas House and Senate “voted overwhelmingly to stop us from being able to ask whether or not those openly carrying guns were licensed.”