by Christian Gomez
Police and other law enforcement officers are being shot and ambushed at an alarming rate this year. Between January 1 and September 30, 2021, a total of 241 law enforcement officers were shot and 44 were killed by gunfire, according to data collected by the National Fraternal Order of Police (FOP). Of the 241 officers shot during this time period, 93 were shot in 75 separate ambush-style attacks. And many of these ambushes are happening before the officers have any chance to respond.
On August 3, 2021, at approximately 10:37 a.m. EDT, Senior Officer George Gonzalez, 37, of the Pentagon Force Protection Agency (PFPA) was on duty at the Pentagon Transit Center platform when a male suspect exiting a bus immediately stabbed his neck with a knife without provocation. The assailant was later identified as 27-year-old Austin William Lanz, of Acworth, Georgia. The two struggled, with Lanz repeatedly stabbing Gonzalez in his neck and killing him. During the struggle, Lanz shot himself with Gonzalez’s firearm. Shortly after, responding PFPA officers converged on Lanz and shots were exchanged. Lanz died on the scene. A civilian bystander was also injured at the scene and taken to a local hospital for non-life-threatening injuries and released the same day, according to the FBI.
Gonzalez, a native of Brooklyn, New York, was remembered by his friends and family as a “die-hard Yankees fan.” He had been twice promoted since joining the PFPA and previously served an 11-month tour of duty in Iraq from August 2004 to July 2005, with the U.S. Army. Gonzalez earned the Army Commendation Medal for his service in Iraq as a cannon crew member, according to the Military Times.
Sadly, incidents such as this are becoming more prevalent. More and more, the possibility of being ambushed each day while on-duty comes with the job. In fact, ambush-style attacks on law enforcement personnel in 2021 have in creased 103-percent from the same time in 2020, according to the FOP. In general, 2021 has been a deadly year for those who wear the badge.
According to the Officer Down Memorial Page, as of October 7, 2021, a total of 340 law enforcement officers have died in the line of duty since January 1st. Of those 340, about 23 percent (77) were felonious deaths — as a result of gunfire, automobile crash, struck by a vehicle, assault, drowned, or stabbed. With a little less than three months left in the year (as of the time of writing this article), these numbers are almost identical to those for 2020, in which a total of 374 officers died while on the line of duty, of which 21 percent (also 77) law enforcement officers were feloniously killed.
Naturally, this begs the question: What is motivating these killings and ambushes of police and other uniformed law enforcement officers?
One need not look far on social media to find a slurry of hatred directed against police and law enforcement in general. Websites such as Twitter are abuzz with vulgar anti-police hashtags such as #ACAB for “All Cops Are B*****ds.” Posts with this acronym are usually accompanied by either hateful memes or video clips showing police (mostly in the United States and the U.K., but also elsewhere in Europe, Israel, and South America) in the middle of responding to a crime or apprehending a suspect without any context for the situation. On their own, without any context as to what happened before, the few seconds of video can look bad and that’s the point of the carefully spliced footage.
The idea is to make police look like lawless street thugs who violently berate people of color, women, and underage teenagers for (seemingly) no reason, seeing as the clips don’t show what happened before. These clips can be damaging when viewed by impressionable audiences scrolling through their social media feed on their phone. Many of these posts refer to the police or law enforcement officer attempting to subdue the unruly suspect in the footage as a “fascist,” “NAZI,” or “racist.” Short clips such as these, without any context and coupled with the hashtag #ACAB, perpetuate the notion that all police are bad and that the solution is to either “#DefundThePolice” or “#AbolishThePolice.”
While these posts do not always explicitly call for violence against police and law-enforcement officers (sometimes they do), they nevertheless generate and spread the kind of fear and hate that could motivate a person to ambush and kill law-enforcement officers without provocation.
On the night of December 7, 2019, officer Stephen Carr, 27, of the Fayetteville Police Department (FPD) was ambushed and killed while sitting in his patrol car parked behind the FPD station in Fayetteville, Arkansas. Chilling footage released by the Washington County Sheriff’s Office showed an armed man approaching Carr’s patrol car from behind before shooting his firearm into the vehicle multiple times. According to a preliminary autopsy, Carr was shot a total of 10 times in the head, the Washington County Sheriff’s Office revealed.
Footage also showed two responding officers darting out to the parking lot and shooting towards the suspect before chasing him into alley. The officers confronted the assailant in the alley, where he was killed in a shootout. The suspect was identified as 35-year-old London T. Phillips. He was found in possession of a 9mm semi-automatic pistol (the same one he used to execute Officer Carr) and two boxes of ammunition. Like most of the assailants who ambush and murder law enforcement officers, Phillips acted alone.
According to a 13-page “Ambush Fact Sheet” report, published in 2015 by the International Association of Chiefs of Police (IACP), in collaboration with the Center for Officer Safety & Wellness and the U.S. Department of Justice’s Community Oriented Policing Services (COPS) program, “The vast majority (83%) of assailants [in ambush incidents] acted alone.” Only 9 percent of the time are there two assailants, and 8 percent there are three or more assailants, the report detailed.
Also of interest was the fact that a “sizable minority (40%) have a violent criminal record,” in turn meaning that 60 percent do not. What would cause a lone individual — especially in that 60 percent category that has no violent criminal record — to commit such a heinous crime directed specifically at law enforcement?
Certainly, there can be a number of contributing factors: a personal grudge or animosity toward police following a prior arrest or incarceration for a non-violent crime (i.e., a desire for revenge), an overdose of psychopathic or other illicit drugs, overconsumption of alcohol, and playing video games where the player kills police officers (most notably, the Grand Theft Auto series). However, none of these really strike at the core underlying the hatred against law enforcement.
A likely suspect that is seldom mentioned and extensively researched is the role of social media, particularly how it can radicalize users with extremist political content (e.g., calls to overthrow the state and capitalism, and defund/abolish the police/ICE, all in the name of fighting either a struggle for “liberation” or a “revolution”). This is the kind of extremist rhetoric associated with the far-left, socialist and communist organizations (see our 2020 Special Report about leading anti-police groups).
Although London Phillips — Officer Carr’s murderer — acted alone, he may have been influenced through social media. According to the Washington County Sheriff’s Office, “Searches of the assailant’s social media accounts indicate he was interested in anti-law enforcement groups.” The Associated Press also reported that “Police have said Phillips was ‘looking for an officer to kill’ when he shot Carr.”
When an individual — such as a London Phillips, for instance — is perpetually radicalized with anti-police content on social media, creating and/or feeding into his hatred of law enforcement, it should come as no surprise when such a person takes the life of an officer.
It would be difficult to overstate the power and influence of social media. In her opening remarks before a U.S. Senate panel on August 5, 2021, Facebook whistleblower Frances Haugen stated that Facebook has “a system that amplifies division, extremism, and polarization…. In some cases, this dangerous online talk that has led to actual violence that harms and even kills people.”
Hashtags on social media such as #ACAB and #DefundThePolice are more than just simple misguided political statements or expressions of free speech; they can also serve as rally cries for further animosity toward law enforcement, putting the lives of officers and their families at risk.
In June 2020, teenager Megan O’Grady of Cape Coral, Florida, began receiving death threats on social media for making teddy bears for the children of slain police officers. In a segment on WINK News, Fort Myers, Florida, she elaborated, “We got a bunch of really good comments and then they started being really, really negative. And they were like ‘I hope that your dad gets shot in the face,’ ‘I hope that he’s the next officer you have to make a bear for,’ ‘I hope your whole family gets killed.’” She continued, “I just broke down in tears. I grew up believing that law enforcement is the best thing ever because I’ve grown up with it.”
Megan’s father is a police officer. She founded the non-profit Blue Line Bears, which makes teddy bears for the children of slain law enforcement officers, in order to help support their families. She created the non-profit in 2016 after five officers from the Dallas Police Department and Dallas Area Rapid Transit (DART) were ambushed and killed that year. Since then, she’s helped well over 200 families and as of October 6, 2021 has delivered over 900 custom hand-sewn bears. During the WINK News segment that aired in June 2020, she explained, “when a police officer is killed in the line of duty, I take one of their uniform shirts and I make them into teddy bears for the kids.”
In July 2020, another teen, 16-year-old Savannah Chavez, was attacked with vile, hateful comments on Twitter in response to her heartfelt post in memory of her father, McAllen Police Officer Ismael Chavez. Officer Chavez, 39, along with Officer Edelmiro Garza, 45, were both ambushed and murdered in the line of duty on July 11, 2020, while responding to a call about a domestic disturbance in south McAllen, Texas.
The assailant, 23-year-old Audon Ignacio Camarillo, opened fire on the officers as they were approaching the front door of the residence. Both Chavez and Garza were rushed to a local hospital, where they were pronounced dead. At a press conference, the McAllen chief of police told reporters, “The officers never had a chance to suspect a deadly assault on them, much less death, at that moment in time.” The officers, he stated, “did not draw their weapons, did not fire, [they] never stood a chance.”
With the number of police ambushes and murders skyrocketing, it would behoove authorities and elected officials to pay closer attention to anti-police social media posts and comments. Seeing as those who post such violent and vile comments feed into the very anti-law enforcement climate that threatens the lives law enforcement officers and their families.
Additionally, Congress should also investigate subversive organizations, such as: ANTIFA, the Communist Party USA, Revolutionary Communist Party USA (RevCom), Workers World Party, Freedom Road Socialist Organization/Liberation Road, Party for Socialism and Liberation, Sunrise Movement, Huey P. Newton Gun Club, New Black Panther Party, and the Black Hebrew Israelite movement, among other anti-police groups that promote open hostility against law enforcement. How many more officers have to be ambushed before those in government act to protect the very police and sheriffs who keep them and our local communities safe?