Ohio Attorney General Dave Yost rails against 'defund the police' at fallen officers memorial

ELYRIA — The names of 22 fallen law enforcement officers were intoned Thursday morning, their sacrifices remembered by those who gathered in uniform for the annual Lorain County Police Memorial ceremony. The line-of-duty losses span 135 years, from the death of Oberlin Constable Frank Stone in 1881 to Ohio State Highway Patrol Trooper Kenneth Velez in 2016. Speaking to a crowd assembled on Third Street in front of the old county courthouse, Ohio Attorney General Dave Yost paid tribute to those who swear to enforce the law of the land. "Each day they put on the uniform and the badge, and they walk out on the street to confront violence and evil at the risk of their own lives," he said. The Officer Down Memorial Page, a nonprofit group, memorializes more than 24,000 American law enforcement officers who have died in the line of duty since 1776. In 2020, it counted 362 line of duty deaths across the country. The overwhelming majority — 234 deaths — were attributed to COVID-19. The nonprofit's statistics show 59 officers died last year by assault or gunfire, not including accidental firearms discharges. So far this year, there have been 125 line of duty deaths nationwide, according to Officer Down. Of those, 72 were due to the coronavirus, heart attacks or other health issues. Yost, a Republican, used his time at the microphone Thursday to talk at length about his opposition to a national call to "defund the police." Doing so would entail moving money from law enforcement budgets to social services, downsizing the role of police in response to school discipline, drug overdoses and mental health crises — all of which Yost said have been increasingly laid on officers' shoulders in recent years. Defunding the police has been a central issue for the racial justice movement in reaction to the killings of Black people by law enforcement, such as the 2020 murder of George Floyd by former Minneapolis police Officer Derek Chauvin. In the past year, 973 people have been shot and killed by police, according to The Washington Post's ongoing "Fatal Force" project. In 2015, after Michael Brown, an unarmed Black man, was killed by police in Ferguson, Missouri, the Post started logging every shooting involving an on-duty police officer in the United States. Since then, the project has documented more than 5,000 such fatal incidents. It found the FBI tally of fatal police shootings was undercounted by half, since police departments provide that information to the FBI on a voluntary basis. "Like all things human, there are flaws and mistakes, and sometimes plain injustice," Yost said. "We can't deny that. But what we have to ask is whether these incidents are the norm or the exception." For every officer who makes a mistake or commits a crime, there are thousands who do the right thing, helping people in desperate need, he said. And steps are being taken to weed "bad actors" from the ranks. Yost compared the "small handful of cops who do wrong" to those doctors who commit malpractice and harm patients. Yet there are no calls for health care to be defunded, he said, and "nobody shoots at doctors — that's not part of the job description." The "vast majority" of Americans support law enforcement, Yost said. An Ipsos poll released in March showed 49 percent of Americans believe law and order is the most important thing to ensure, while 31 percent felt the most important protection is the Constitutional right to peaceful protest. Those numbers are strikingly different than last June, when attitudes were split and protests against police brutality and racial biases were held nationwide. Now 69 percent trust local law enforcement to promote justice and equal treatment for people of all races, up from 56 percent last year, Ipsos' research found. At the same time, trust in the Black Lives Matter movement sank from 60 to 50 percent. Yost objected to "knee jerk demonization" of law enforcement, which he said is a noble and worthy profession. He said every officer deserves the presumption that they act in good faith to the best of their ability and training until proven otherwise. Contact Jason Hawk at (440) 329-7122 or news@lcnewspapers.com.