WASHINGTON DC (Agencies):President Biden on Saturday honored police during a speech outside the Capitol to honor fallen police who died in the line of duty in 2019 and 2020.
Biden said it had been a historically difficult period for police, arguing the wid-er public didn’t understand the difficulties and that the country would have a harder time finding people to be police officers as a result.
“I’ve been coming to this memorial for 40 years missed a couple, and I’ve spoken to too many police memorials around the country. And it always amazes me how the public doesn’t fully understand what we expect of our law enforcement officers,” Biden said at the 40th ann-ual National Peace Office-rs’ Memorial Service.
Biden said being a poli-ce officer today “is a lot ha-rder than it has ever been.” “We expect you to be peop-le ready to stand in the way and take a bullet for us, we expect you to be able to track down the bad buys, we expect you to be able to be the psychologist who ta-lks the couple that are having a violent confrontation together, to step back,” he said.
“We expect you to be everything. We expect eve-rything of you. And it’s be-yond the capacity of anyo-ne to meet the tall expectations.” “We’re waking up to the notion, that unless we can change the environment in which the job can be done, we’re going to have trouble having enough women and men come forward who want to do the job,” said Biden, who ordered flags to be flown at half-staff in recognition of Saturday’s event.
He also commented on the shootings early Saturday of three police officers who had been working security jobs at a Houston bar when they came under fire in what police there described as an ambush attack, and on the police who defended the Capitol on Jan. 6, when a mob overwhelmed U.S. Capitol Police and invaded the building.
