Sheriff Clarke: Inflammatory Rhetoric on Cops Enabled 'Loons'

Inflammatory rhetoric from the White House to the New York City mayor's office has emboldened people to take violent actions against police officers, Milwaukee County Sheriff David Clarke told Fox News on Monday.

Clarke's words came after two Los Angeles police officers were fired on Sunday night  and after two New York City officers were killed by a gunman who said he was seeking retaliation for the death of Eric Garner during Garner's arrest last summer. The L.A. officers were uninjured.

"That was my biggest fear with this irresponsible and inflammatory rhetoric from the highest offices in the land," Clarke said Monday on Fox News Channel's "Your World with Neil Cavuto." "It allowed these loons to come out of their sewers."

Clarke said cop-haters and anarchists feel they have been given license by President Barack Obama, Attorney General Eric Holder and New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio to come out into the open.

Many NYPD officers said they felt thrown under the bus by de Blasio after a grand jury declined to indict a police officer in Garner's death. De Blasio made a long speech afterward indicating the problems with police were the culmination of centuries of racism.

Clarke has been among critics who say that, along with statements by Obama and Holder, these kinds of statements have fueled a view that police departments are racist.

Clarke said he thinks police are justified to turn their backs on de Blasio and to boo him, as happened in a police graduation ceremony on Monday.

"They watched this cop-bashing just like I did," he said.

He said people are quick to defend the vile and vulgar language being used by some anti-police protesters as free speech. Clarke said police have the same right to make what he called a "more socially acceptable way to their First Amendment freedoms."

Related Stories:

• Bernard Kerik: De Blasio, Sharpton 'Have Blood on Their Hands'
• Pataki Slams de Blasio, Holder on Shootings