Political leaders and law enforcement officials in Los Angeles have expressed outrage at the murders of five police officers at a Black Lives Matter protest in Dallas. In contrast, officials in San Francisco and Oakland equivocated, or ignored the event.
Los Angeles Mayor Eric Garcetti spoke out on Twitter: “Tonight’s assassinations undermine our democracy and were an attack on us all. We cannot let hate spread like a disease in our country.”
He issued four tweets in total, all expressing concern for law enforcement, including:
Other Los Angeles officials expressed similar sentiments. L.A. Police Department chief Charlie Beck said that local police would wear mourning armbands in solidarity with Dallas:
Police in San Francisco and Oakland expressed similar sentiments. The same was not true, however, of elected officials in the Bay Area, where Black Lives Matter protesters vandalized a police station and blocked traffic even as events in Dallas unfolded.
Oakland mayor Libby Schaaf had little to say about events in Dallas. Her most recent tweet, as of Friday morning, was a retweeted message supporting Black Lives Matter:
San Francisco mayor Ed Lee addressed the police killings, but created an implied moral equivalence between police murdered in cold blood and black men killed by police in the course of duty:
Joel B. Pollak is Senior Editor-at-Large at Breitbart News. His new book, See No Evil: 19 Hard Truths the Left Can’t Handle, will be published by Regnery on July 25 and is available for pre-order through Amazon. Follow him on Twitter at @joelpollak.