In 2012, Muslims desecrated the grave sites of World War II soldiers from Western nations who had been buried in a cemetery in Libya. While inexcusable, the motivation for their dastardly actions can be linked to cultural insensitivity toward the West, engrained into their psyche for a millennium by Islam, which teaches them to hate infidels as inferior beings.
In August 2021, a young woman approached a temporary memorial dedicated to one of Chicago’s finest: female Police Officer Ella French, 29, killed days earlier in the line of duty. The woman grabbed the slain officer’s photograph from a display, crumpled it up and then threw it to the floor. On Feb. 9, 2022, the woman, identified as Chicago resident Anna N. Kochan, 26, a self-described anarchist-communist, was arrested for vandalizing the memorial. Perhaps in a moment of self-aggrandizement she intended to share later with friends, Kochan foolishly made a cellphone video of her actions – evidence that will now be used against her.
While Kochan’s actions that day were inexcusable as well, unlike the Muslim desecrators above, hers cannot be rationalized as lacking cultural sensitivity. They can only be called out as the actions of a despicable and hateful individual lacking any sensitivity for respecting those who have fallen while protecting the public. Kochan’s name can now be added to the list of the social miscreants from Antifa and Black Lives Matter who have easily been manipulated to support a misguided “defund the police” movement that is proving deadly to public safety as national crime rates continue to rise.
In arresting Kochan, police took a bit of pleasure in cuffing her with the handcuffs belonging to Officer Carlos Yanoz, French’s partner on the day she was killed. Yanoz had been shot twice in the head and, although he survived, he will be permanently disabled. French and Yanoz were cowardly attacked by two brothers after the officers had made what seemingly was a non-threatening traffic stop. French’s brother shared that his sister had joined the police force as “she’s always believed in helping people that can’t take care of themselves.”
Responsibility for the police shootings must be shared with politicians who have defied all logic in pushing the defund police movement. By giving credibility to a movement that has yet to even offer a rational alternative – going to the ridiculous extreme of suggesting unarmed social workers replace armed police officers in certain cases – these politicians have basically declared “open season” on law enforcement whose jobs have now become immensely more dangerous.
Some Democrat-controlled cities, such as San Francisco and Albuquerque, are already using unarmed social workers for certain calls such as inebriation, homelessness, addiction and mental health – calls that supposedly do not involve a threat to public safety. The problem with this approach is that it is impossible to know when a seemingly non-threatening incident can turn ugly, endangering the unarmed social workers involved and the public. Undoubtedly, when Officer French made a traffic stop that would end her life, she foresaw no such deadly threat.
The hypocrisy of the above politicians, especially those progressive legislative members of the group known as “The Squad,” is evident by the fact, while singing the defund police tune, they are spending hundreds of thousands of dollars to hire “armed” security guards for their own personal safety. We need not wonder why their guards, in taking on such a security role, insist on being armed.
With midterm elections approaching and polls indicating a tidal wave Republican victory, Democrats now seem to be playing down their defund-police focus. However, the damage has already been done. A lax law enforcement environment has been created by undermining police authority and implementing a softer prosecutorial system limiting the charges it will pursue, encouraging judges to set lower bail amounts for violent crimes. America has become a safe haven for those wishing to do harm to the public, which foreign, violent gangs, like MS-13, see as an invitation to do their work in the U.S. to take advantage of the reduced incarceration risks of doing so.
Kochan’s actions above in disrespecting the memorial photograph of Officer French is a symptom of a disease much like COVID-19 – a senseless man-created disease. While a Manhattan Project-like mindset was initiated to develop a vaccine for the coronavirus, the same mindset needs to be applied in educating the public about our men and women in blue and the challenges they face daily in making life and death decisions. Yes, a few police make mistakes, but law enforcement today is suffering a much greater toll as 73 police deaths in the line of duty occurred in 2021, representing a 26-year high and a 59% increase over 2020. Telling too is that almost half of the 2021 deaths were due to ambushes, unprovoked attacks such as Officer French suffered.
Hopefully, Kochan will be convicted of vandalizing Officer French’s memorial. A good punishment for her would be for the judge to order she ride with police officers on patrol and write an essay explaining the challenges they face and why we have been fortunate to have officers like French and Yanoz choosing to man the thin blue line separating us from rampant lawlessness.
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This article was originally published by the WND News Center.