The latest depravity

The Wall Street Journal:

No one other than the shooter is re­spon­si­ble for the gun­fire am­bush Sat­ur­day of two Los An­ge­les County sher­iff’s deputies as they sat in their pa­trol car. But the same can’t be said for the pro­testers who blocked the en­trance to the hos­pi­tal where the two are be­ing treated, and chanted “we hope they die.” The lat­ter is a cul­tural poi­son nur­tured by the left-wing anti-po­lice move­ment sweep­ing the coun­try.

The two deputies were “am­bushed by a gun­man in a cow­ardly fash­ion” in the Comp­ton neigh­bor­hood, said Sher­iff Alex Vil­la­neuva at a press con­fer­ence. The deputies hadn’t been iden­ti­fied by name as we write this, but press re­ports say one is a 31-year-old mother and the other a 24-year-old man. Both have been with the de­part­ment a lit­tle more than a year.

Po­lice haven’t iden­ti­fied a sus­pect, but the ran­dom­ness of the am­bush sug­gests some­one look­ing for any avail­able po­lice tar­get. We’ve seen this be­fore when anti-po­lice fever is hot. A gun­man shot and killed two of­fi­cers in their car in New York in 2014 fol­low­ing the death of black sus­pects be­ing ar­rested in Fer­gu­son, Mo., and New York.

The protests are worse this year fol­low­ing the death of George Floyd in Min­neapolis, and the anti-po­lice vi­o­lence is more wide­spread. An of­fi­cer was stabbed in the neck in Flat­bush in New York City in an am­bush in June. The of­fi­cer sur­vived.

De­mo­c­ra­tic mayor Eric Garcetti called the chants and protests at the hos­pi­tal “un­ac­cept­able” and “ab­hor­rent,” but he and other De­moc­rats need to do more to con­demn and os­tra­cize these pro­testers. De­moc­rats may fear the wrath of Black Lives Mat­ter, but the back­lash else­where in Amer­ica will be far greater if plea­sure at cop killing be­comes com­mon on the left.

Policing reform is impossible amid a war on police. Mr. Garcetti and other mayors should abandon their cuts to law-enforcement budgets and express regular solidarity for cops on the beat. Without such a signal, police will continue to retreat from enforcing the law in crime-ridden neighborhoods, and those who suffer most will be the law-abiding in the likes of Compton and Flatbush.