Former President Donald Trump accepted the endorsement of the national police union in North Carolina on Friday, warning that law enforcement officers are “more at risk” than ever before as a result of policies supported by Vice President Kamala Harris.
The same day, the Brotherhood of Police (FOP) announced that Trump had been selected as its endorsed candidate for the 2024 election. Standing next to union president Patrick Yoess at a rally in Charlotte, the 78-year-old said he was “deeply honored” to accept the endorsement.
“We know you, we know the great work you do, and the American people have a lot of respect for you,” Trump said. “So I want to thank you on behalf of everybody, because I see it.”
“Unfortunately, as I said a while ago, the profession is probably more at risk and threatened than it has ever been before, and that's something we don't want to see,” he added.
The FOP reported that as of July 31, 223 officers had been shot in the line of duty, a slight 2% decrease compared to the same period in 2023, and 31 officers had been killed in shootings.
In 2023, a record 378 police officers were shot, with 46 killed.
“I've been visiting with many families of police officers who are no longer with us, and we have to give them back the power and the respect that they deserve more than anybody,” Trump reflected. “And we're going to do that.”
The former president also claimed he had the support of “New York's best cops,” despite no public announcement to that effect from any of the NYPD's unions.
“They're not going to do that. They said, we don't care, we're going to support you anyway,” he boasted.
Trump contrasted his plans to “launch a war on crime in America” - which include guaranteeing qualified immunity to protect police officers from lawsuits, pledging to support the death penalty for those who kill police officers and launching a major crackdown on drug cartels and their leaders – with what he called “Kamala's crime wave.”
“As we gather today, America's cities, suburbs and towns are under siege,” Trump told FOP members. “Kamala Harris and the Communist Left have unleashed a brutal plague of bloodshed, crime, chaos, misery and death upon our nation.”
“Other than that, they're actually doing pretty well,” he joked.
Trump also detailed the shooting of a Milwaukee police officer the previous night in the line of duty, and spoke of the rampant littering, graffiti and retail theft that “law-abiding citizens are forced to endure.”
“The new thing in New York is that if you go to a pharmacy and buy an aspirin or a toothbrush, it takes 45 minutes for the pharmacy to open the glass container for you, because people just come in and take as much as they want,” he said, attacking Harris' record of reducing sentences for thieves while she was district attorney in San Francisco.
“She has destroyed San Francisco,” he said, calling Harris “our enemy” in front of officers.
“But then she came up with a brilliant idea: she could steal as much as she wanted up to $950 and nothing would happen beyond that,” he continued.
“That's why people come in with their calculators,” Trump joked again.
He also criticized House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.), noting that “the big wall around her house… didn't help solve the problems she had,” an apparent reference to the case of Pelosi's husband, Paul Pelosi, who was bludgeoned to death by a madman in their San Francisco home in fall 2022.
James Tignanelli, president of the Michigan State Police Association, noted at a press conference Friday that the state's attorney general, a Democrat who has supported Harris, has indicted “10 to 15 police officers” during his time in office.
“That's not going to attract candidates,” Tignanelli told reporters.
Dr. John Lott, director of the Crime Prevention Research Center, also released startling statistics showing an increase in unreported violent crimes during Presidents Biden and Harris’ tenure.
“If you look at overall violent crime under the Trump administration, it went down 17 percent, but under the Biden administration it's up 43 percent,” Lott said, citing data from the Bureau of Justice Statistics.
“At no time in our nation's history have we seen such a large increase in recorded violent crime overall,” he added. Final Report The 2022 Department of Justice Crime Victimization Report.
Lott explained that before 2020, the numbers reported by the Bureau of Justice Statistics and the FBI “roughly moved in the same direction,” but since then “they have been moving in opposite directions each year, often by very large amounts.”
“While the FBI showed a 2% decrease in reported violent crime, national crime victimization data shows a 42% increase in violent crime,” he said, citing 2022 figures.
Still, Trump was in a celebratory mood Friday after Manhattan Supreme Court Justice Juan Marchan postponed the sentencing date for Trump's “hush money” conviction until Nov. 26, meaning he won't face any jail time before the presidential election.
“The lawsuit has been postponed because everyone realizes I have done nothing wrong and therefore there is no lawsuit,” he boasted, “This is an attack by my political opponents in Washington, D.C., by comrade Kamala Harris and by my far-left opponents, aimed at interfering with our election.”
“We will restore law and order to our streets. We will restore law and order to our state,” he vowed to the FOPers. “You will have the same backup you had four years ago.”
