It’s open season. Police officers, the brave men and women we trust with our lives every day, are being hunted. Selfless men and women who joined the force to protect and serve the community they love have been moved into the crosshairs by anti-police rhetoric and fringe groups. One of those fringe groups is the “Black Lives Matter” movement.

Black Lives Matter has been widely covered, and rarely criticized, by the media. Black Lives Matter arose out of the Michael Brown shooting, and gained notoriety for its participation in protests of officer-related deaths across the country. The “Black Lives Matter” movement doesn’t advocate for black people by protesting for legislative change; rather, they spew anti-cop laced rhetoric to the angry masses in big cities.  Recently, Black Lives Matter protesters have protested at every chance they can get, yelling chants like “Pigs in a blanket, fry em’ like bacon.”

While Black Lives Matter may have started as a group for citizens to advocate for justice, it has mutated into an unapologetic hate group.

Police officers are undoubtedly the target of Black Lives Matter’s attacks and rhetoric. BLM was quick to devour the media’s anti-police attitude toward the Michael Brown investigation, and followed in the footsteps of the media on the Eric Garner case. After every major police related incident, BLM wastes no time to take to the streets and demonize the police. BLM protesters showed their idiocy when they interrupted a Bernie Sanders rally, a candidate that mostly sides with Black Lives Matter on its key issues.

The link between Black Lives Matter and a rise in violence against police has been a hotly debated topic among major media outlets in the past week.  Police deaths in the line of duty have spiked exponentially in the past couple of months, and many people have been quick to link Black Lives Matter to the deaths.  Recently, Harris County Sherrif Hickman denounced Black Lives Matter and their mantra after the brutal killing of Deputy Miles Goforth. In an interview with local Houston news station Click2Houston, Hickman made the following statement:

One of the things I want to make very clear, the things I’m talking about is that extreme rhetoric, while they may be splinter groups we need to make sure that we tone down that kind of rhetoric. When you literally call for the killing of white people, law enforcement, whatever you are saying when you talk about that level of hate and just outrageousness, there ought to be consequences.

It seems that we have forgotten that police officers are often the only thing that stands between us as citizens and evil.  This video on Facebook perfectly sums up the duties of police officers.  In a few graphic and gut-wrenching minutes, it shows just how much officers sacrifice for their communities.

Our society has to remember that “Blue Lives Matter” too. It’s time to instill respect for police officers into the people of this great country, and simultaneously reject the rhetoric of fringe groups like Black Lives Matter.