[Paul Cassell] Does the Obama administration have law enforcement’s back?

President Obama yesterday sent an open letter to “the brave members of our Nation’s law enforcement community.” The president wrote: “Every day, you confront danger so it does not find our families. . . . We recognize it, we respect it, we appreciate it, and we depend on you.” The president’s words are welcome. In the wake of recent killings of police officers in Dallas, Baton Rouge and (yesterday) in Kansas City, Kan., they are more important than ever.  Hopefully his letter can help change the poisonous atmosphere that too often surrounds discussions of policing, as Heather Mac Donald has been so eloquently documenting in her posts here, here and here, as well as in her excellent new book, “The War on Cops.”

A Dallas police officer observes a moment of silence on July 8 after putting some flowers on a police car that makes up part of a makeshift memorial at Dallas police headquarters after the Dallas police shooting. (Carlo Allegri/Reuters)

While Obama’s open letter is laudable, one claim in the letter is worth at least some discussion. The letter’s concluding two sentences are: “Thank you for your courageous service. We have your backs.”  I wonder about this last claim — does the administration really have law enforcement’s back? More precisely, has the administration done everything that reasonably could have been done to prevent attacks on law enforcement? Of course, hindsight is always 20/20. But back in December 2014, I wrote a post entitled “Seven steps Eric Holder should take to help prevent more police officers from being murdered.” In the wake of the murder of NYPD officers Rafael Ramos and Wenjian Liu in retaliation for the deaths of Michael Brown and Eric Garner, I proposed seven specific steps Attorney General Holder could take to reduce the risk of further senseless murders of law enforcement officers. Given Obama’s claim that he has the backs of law enforcement, it may be useful to check in on what his administration did with these seven ideas.

1. Send 30 representatives to the funerals of Rafael Ramos and Wenjian Liu.

My first idea was the administration should send 30 representatives to the funerals of Officers Ramos and Liu. The idea stemmed from the fact that the White House had sent three official representatives to Michael Brown’s funeral. It seemed as though it might be useful to underscore that “a vast difference exists between the death of a robber attacking a law enforcement officer and the deaths of two police officers gunned down in the line of duty while monitoring a dangerous neighborhood. The attorney general should make that difference clear by sending ten-fold the number of representatives” to the officers’ funerals.

Vice President Joe Biden attended the funeral of Ramos — the largest police funeral in the city’s history. FBI Director James Comey also attended, and perhaps other administration figures did as well. While sending official representatives to Michael Brown’s funeral still seems curious, give the administration full credit for showing its support to law enforcement at the Ramos funeral.

2. Meet with the slain officers’ families.

My next idea was that Holder should meet with families of slain law