What Sheriff David Clarke Just Said Should Make AG Loretta Lynch Nervous

On Tuesday, four black men ambushed and shot at a black police officer in St. Louis, Missouri, while he sat in his personal vehicle. The uniformed officer was wearing a bulletproof vest. He returned fire and might have hit a suspect.

“They targeted, they ambushed, they tried to assassinate a police officer,” Police Chief Sam Dotson said.

Sheriff David Clarke spoke to Stuart Varney of Fox News about the incident.

Is this a war on the police?

“Unambiguously,” the sheriff said. “I said that six or seven months ago in the days following the Ferguson riots and the ones in Baltimore and some areas of New York, and people thought that I was using hyperbole…There’s a crisis going on here, Stuart. This has not only happened in St. Louis twice, this has happened in New York with Officers [Rafael] Ramos and [Wenjian] Liu who were assassinated as they sat in a squad car. It’s happened in Vegas, where two of their finest were gunned down as they sat in a restaurant. In 2012, in happened in Washington state, the same sort of thing.”

We’re hearing nothing from the White House or the Department of Justice, the sheriff added. Why? These crimes don’t fit the race-baiting narrative. Sheriff Clarke said he’s going to call Attorney General Loretta Lynch personally and demand an investigation and study “into this pattern that has developed.”

Varney asked the sheriff whether he thinks it’s a race issue. Watch the brief clip for his response.