A tragic ambush murder of two Police Officers in Des Moines Iowa Wednesday morning in what’s become an all to familiar occurance in America.
Two Officers sitting in their vehicles brutally shot and killed in two separate murders. The first killing at 1:06am . The other Officer who was also just sitting in his vehicle was killed 20 minutes later.
Never before in the history of the nation have we ever seen such a calculated attack on the men and women we depend on for our safety.
And attack such as this certainly creates nationwide shockwaves as law offcers everywhere are forced to hunker down and take even greater precautions as if they weren’t already on high alert after all the other police killings this year.
Certainly our thoughts and prayers go with the Des Moines Officers and their familes.
There have been 49 Police killings in the United States just this year. Half of them ambush styled murders where the Officers were killed in cold blood
It’s a tragic trend that certainly hit right at home with the recent shooting death of St Louis County Officer Blake Snyder and the ambush shooting that left Ballwin Officer Mike Flamion paralyzed.
One shooting is one too many but the frequency has left the nation stunned, searching for answers.
I said once before the tremendous outpouring of support that continues in the wake of the death of Officer Snyder is, I think, an effort by the community to do something about a situation that they’re struggling to understand.
Some the reasons seem clear.
Law Enforcement has been demonized for at least the past couple of years with respected leaders even jumping on the band wagon to comdemn every Policeman or woman.
So in this environment where so many people think of all police as bad, demented individuals are seizing on this to justify, unjustifiable murders of Police.
Every action has a consequence. I sincerely believe we are seeing the consequence of the unrelenting verbal assault on Police that’s now morphed into actual physical attacks like Dallas, and Baton Rouge where multiple officers were gunnen down and here in St Louis where we’ve felt the tragedy up close and now in Des Moines Iowa.
We often forget that Police departments were set up for a reason. We use to have vigilantes back in the Wild West where everyone wore a six gun and were responsible for their own protection. Society decided that this was an untenable situation as many innocent people were being killed by street justice.
Some inner city neightborhoods are now like scenes out of the Wild West where criminals now believe that the public as turrned against police, and as a result many crimnals see themselves as having the green light as law enforcment retrenches for their own protection, something we see is entirely justified in the wake of all the murders.
Ultimately those who suffer are not only the slain officers themselves, and their families but also the crime ravaged communited coping with the rising tide of homicides and are depending on effective law enforcement to return their now dangerous neighborhoods to some simblance of safety.
Tragedies like this latest slaying in Des Moines will reverberate across the nation making America just a little less safe than before as Police Departments everywhere mourn the loss of fellow Officers and face the need to pull back even more.
This is certainly a rare and tragic time in American history and no one knows how this heartbreaking story ends, but if we keep going this way it can’t end well for the nation.

By:Elliott Davis