Cynical responses to two police deaths show how toxic our politics have become

Last week, the tragic deaths of two police officers — one in June 2020, one in January 2021 — were briefly back in the news. Both deaths were connected to political events, and the response to them illustrates how toxic our polarized political culture has become.

On July 20 in St. Louis, Missouri, Stephan Cannon was convicted of murder in the June 2, 2020 death of retired police captain David Dorn. Dorn, 77, was fatally shot while trying to protect a friend’s jewelry store amid the protests and riots that followed the murder of George Floyd by a police officer.

On July 21 in Washington, the congressional select committee investigating the Jan. 6 attack on the U.S. Capitol revisited the death of Capitol Police officer Brian Sicknick. Sicknick, a 42-year-old New Jersey native, suffered a stroke soon after being attacked by rioters trying to overthrow the result of the election that they believed was “stolen” from Donald Trump. The committee released text messages from Jan. 9, 2021 in which two high-level Trump campaign staffers expressed disgust at Trump’s silence regarding the officer’s death.

Because the Jan. 6 committee’s Twitter account wrongly said that Sicknick “succumbed to his injuries,” Trump supporters on Twitter and some conservative journalists were quick to charge that it was a “lie”: The medical examiner’s report released in April 2021 concluded Sicknick died of “natural causes.”

But, firstly, neither Trump nor his staffers knew that in January 2021. The Capitol Police and the Justice Department both said Sicknick died from injuries; his collapse was believed to have been caused by a chemical irritant sprayed in his face by rioters. There were also some erroneous reports that he was beaten on the head with a fire extinguisher, probably based on video of a different officer being hit with one.

Secondly, the medical examiner’s report stressed that while Sicknick’s stroke was not caused by allergic reaction to the spray, “all that transpired played a role in his condition.” The physical and mental stress of battling a violent mob very likely contributed to the stroke. Police officer Caroline Edwards told the committee she saw a “ghostly pale” Sicknick holding his head in his hands after being sprayed. Sicknick may not have been murdered, but it’s hardly a stretch to say that the rioters and their instigators are responsible.

Meanwhile, the guilty verdict in Dorn’s murder received extensive attention only in right-wing media such as Fox News, as well as in local media. The former officer’s death also received scant national coverage at the time, despite its shocking circumstances (a video of his final moments was streamed online). I could find no record of any Democratic politician, including those who condemned the riots, commenting on his murder or expressing condolences. While the racial justice protests of that summer were about the importance of Black lives, the death of Dorn, a Black retired cop killed by looters, did not fit the narrative.

This silence allowed Dorn’s murder to become political fodder for the right: While Dorn was a Democrat, his widow, Ann Dorn, was invited to speak at the Republican National Convention in the summer of 2020.

One can accuse conservatives of cynically using Dorn’s murder, or of being hypocritical when they profess support for law enforcement but exonerate the pro-Trump rioters of Sicknick’s death. But those on the left whose outrage at violence against police officers is reserved entirely for the cops attacked on Jan. 6 are being no less cynical.

Opinions expressed by Cathy Young, a senior fellow at the Cato Institute, are her own.

By Cathy Young

Cathy Young is a writer for The Bulwark.