Since the first of the year, 55 U.S. police officers have been shot in the line of duty, with five killed. “Enough is enough!” National Fraternal Order of Police (FOP) President Patrick Yoes said in a statement.
According to CNN, 15 officers have been wounded in the last 24 hours, including nine officers in Phoenix. The incident in Phoenix involved police responding to an emergency call of a woman who had been shot. When a police officer arrived, a man invited him inside, only to turn his gun on him and open fire. The injured officer limped away and called for backup.
#Update: Video of the scene in #phoenix, #Arizona, after 5 police officers were hospitalized in a shooting and standoff with a black suspect, whom 1 of the police officer is in critical condition, after request of child protective service to remove a baby from inside the house. pic.twitter.com/Pcrx4IKSZj
— Sotiri Dimpinoudis (@sotiridi) February 11, 2022
Police called out to the occupants of the home. Video taken at the scene shows a man slowly emerging with one hand in the air, the other clutching a pink bag and holding a baby.
“He’s got a baby,” someone says in the video.
The man lays the baby and the bag on the ground and obeys commands from the police to walk backward while keeping his hands in the air.
The suspect, Morris Jones, had earlier tried to escape by attempting to ram his car through a police blockade. The attempt failed and he went back into the house. After he left the baby, all hell broke loose.
Sgt. Williams said as officers moved forward to rescue the baby, Jones opened fire and shot four of them. Four others were injured by shrapnel.
The officers backed away and took cover. Jones continued firing shots toward police and an officer returned fire, Sgt. Williams said.
A SWAT team arrived at the scene and used ballistic shields to rescue the baby, who was uninjured, Sgt. Williams said. Jones fired shots in their direction.
SWAT officers unsuccessfully tried to get Jones to come outside and eventually used a camera to look inside the home, at which point they saw Jones not moving, Sgt. Williams said. Officers entered the home and found Jones dead and a woman believed to be his ex-girlfriend critically injured. She was taken to a hospital where she died of her injuries on Friday afternoon.
For Our VIP Members: Biden Wants Us to Forget He Embraced Defunding the Police
CNN reports that there were also shootings of police officers in four other states — Maryland, New Mexico, Washington, and Pennsylvania. FOP President Yoes knows what the problem is.
“Our officers are not just in harm’s way due to the dangerous nature of their profession but are too often targets of cowardly individuals whose sole motivation is to injure or kill a law enforcement officer,” he said in a statement.
“It is incumbent upon our elected officials and community leaders to stand up and speak out against the violence against law enforcement officers,” he said.
Too many elected officials and community leaders aren’t standing up against violence directed at law enforcement officers. Some are actively inciting the mob to take violent action against officers. Only when the people who placed the target on the backs of police remove it, will officers be respected again.
Join the conversation as a VIP Member