President Obama signed a law last year intended to protect police officers from ambush attacks, promising to do “everything we can to help ensure the safety of our police officers when they’re in the line of duty.”
Fifteen months later, his administration has yet to implement any provision of that law despite the Justice Department committing to implementation within 60 days at the time it was signed.
The Rafael Ramos and Wenjian Liu National Blue Alert Act of 2015 established a nationwide system to give police an early warning of threats against police officers, similar to Amber Alerts for missing children. The law sped through Congress — where it passed both chambers by a voice vote — after two New York City police officers were shot and killed in an ambush attack in 2014.
But even after a dangerous summer of ambush-style attacks — including high-profile cases in Dallas and Baton Rouge that were in apparent retaliation for the police shootings of African-American men — the national Blue Alert still isn’t in place.
