Toward ending a summer of hatred and slaughter

Orlando. Dallas. Nice. And now Baton Rouge. The mere mention of each of these cities’ names connotes killing fields in this summer of slaughter in the United States and the Western world.

Adding to the 49 indiscriminate shooting deaths at a gay nightclub in Florida, the ambush killings of five police officers in Texas’ third largest city, the mowing down of 84 Independence Day revelers on the French Riviera this summer, many Americans woke up to more of the same anguishing, disturbing and grisly news Sunday morning.

Three police officers in Baton Rouge, La., had been shot and killed and three others injured by a sniper near a convenience store and gas station on a major thoroughfare in the capital of the Pelican State shortly before 9 a.m.

Once again, this attack on the rule of law elicits angst and anger. Once again, the mass killing brings more questions than answers. And once again, a nation grieves and its Star Spangled Banner flies at half-staff in remembrance and honor to the fallen public servants.

The Baton Rouge bloodbath marked the 248th mass shooting in this country this year, according to Mass Shooting Tracker, which defines such a shooting as one in which at least four people are injured. So far this year, the death toll from them stands at about 350.

The killings Sunday also widen the growing divide between police departments and the communities they serve, particularly minority neighborhoods. That, in turn, makes any movement toward unity, cooperation and peaceful coexistence all the more challenging.

Nowhere is that chasm more evident than in Baton Rouge, a city of about 230,000 that’s been seething in racial and police-community turmoil since the July 5 shooting death of Alton Sterling by city police outside a neighborhood convenience store. Anger over the shooting triggered protests nationwide, including the one at which the Dallas officers were murdered.

Louisiana Gov. John Bel Edwards perhaps best captured the dread of the second ambush on American police in as many weeks Sunday when he said, “This is an unspeakable and unjustified attack on all of us at a time when we need unity and healing.”

Toward achieving those ends, a beleaguered President Barack Obama once again marched out in front of national cameras to serve again as consoler in chief. He reminded Americans that attacks on police are attacks on all of us and on the fundamental rule of law that binds us together as a civilized society.

SOUND PRESIDENTIAL ADVICE

He also served up what we consider to be sound and constructive advice: “We don’t need inflammatory rhetoric. We don’t need careless accusations thrown around to score political points or advance an agenda. We need to temper our words and open our hearts. All of us.”

That advice should be taken seriously, particularly now during these two weeks of hyperpartisan political conventioneering in Cleveland and Philadelphia. There, the potential for divisive, angry and threatening rhetoric runs high. That temptation – inside and outside the convention halls – must be avoided at all costs.

A less-acerbic environment would help to pave the way toward tackling issues underlying this summer’s madness and brutality. Prime among them include reducing police-community division, easing racial tensions and minimizing risks for terror attacks. In response to the slew of killings in recent weeks, we have offered several recommendations worthy of recapping today:

Strengthen community policing programs in cities large and small throughout the nation and widen the sphere of influence of groups such as Youngstown’s Community Initiative to Reduce Violence, a consortium of law-enforcement, faith-based and neighborhood leaders acting preemptively to prevent violence.

Encourage greater recruitment of minorities onto police forces, so that people of color can take active roles in solving the problems that are at the center of many of their protests.

Gain passage in Congress of common-sense reforms governing access to firearms, which as we have witnessed vividly in recent weeks can act as lethal weapons of mass destruction.

Clearly, however, inaction or tacit acceptance of mass killings as a new normal must not gain traction. Such apathy will only hasten the day when another American city is added to the growing and grueling list of killing grounds.