Is a growing anti-police sentiment putting Canadian cops in jeopardy?

Late last week, B.C.’s Delta Police Department scrapped an online promotional campaign for a bracelet supporting an officer currently facing murder charges.

According to the Vancouver Sun, the campaign was scrubbed because of complaints that the sale showed a bias toward the accused police officer.

What followed was an argument about how far local police could go in showing support for one of their own, as he works his way through court for the 2012 shooting of a suspect in a five-hour police standoff.

It was a small incident, which received little attention outside of the community. But it speaks to a larger issue playing out across North America.

There is a heightened level of concern about how police officers are perceived at the moment.

After several high-profile deaths at the hands of U.S. police in recent months, followed by the fatal shootings of two on-duty New York Police Officers, authorities are turning on one another, claiming that a bias against police is clouding public sentiment.

In a column published in the Toronto Sun, Toronto Police Association president Mike McCormack said the anti-police rhetoric that runs rampant in North America played a role in the deaths of two New York police officers last week, and continues to threaten lives and public peace.

"It is unthinkable that these officers were murdered simply for doing their jobs. Yet we know that on Christmas Day, NYPD officers – deep in mourning – will wake up, put on their uniforms and go to work," McCormack wrote.

He further opines:

McCormack’s comments don’t come out of the clear blue sky. He was notably critical when Alok Mukherjee, chair of the Toronto Police Services Board, posted an image on Facebook comparing the number of American deaths caused by Ebola, terrorists and police agencies.

Mukherjee said sharing the image was not an endorsement and was simply intended to prompt conversation.

McCormack accused him of fostering anti-police sentiment and called for his resignation.

Notably, the police union president seemed to make vague allusions to that conflict in his editorial, stating that “there are consequences when individuals, groups and politicians post irresponsible anti-police rhetoric, for the sole purpose of inflaming an already volatile situation.”

He said those messages, spread through media, “most certainly played a role in the senseless deaths of these two officers.”

McCormack’s claim that this public wave of anti-police rhetoric was behind the deaths of those police officers doesn’t stand alone.

New York City Police Commissioner Ray Kelly told ABC News that Mayor Bill de Blasio ran an anti-police election campaign last year. Former New York Gov. George Pataki tweeted that the mayor and Attorney General Eric H. Holder Jr. used “divisive anti-cop rhetoric" that helped inspire the shooter.

President Barack Obama has been criticized, and others have pointed at the media’s coverage of protests following incidents like those involving Michael Brown and Eric Garner.

Howard Safer, the former commissioner of the NYPD, wrote in a column for Time that the national dialogue on policing has been distorted. Brown and Garner died while resisting arrest, he notes. Officers Rafael Ramos and Wenjian Liu died while doing their jobs.

"There are 18,000 police departments in the United States. They interact millions of times with the public, and make hundreds of thousands of arrests," he wrote.

"Very few result in a suspect’s death or injury. We do not have police forces out of control as the media and the [Al] Sharptons of the world would have us believe."

In America, it is sadly not entirely clear how many people are killed by police. There are debates about how and where police statistics are compiled, leaving the subject matter inconclusive.

Fivethirtyeight.com, an analytics news site, notes that the U.S. government doesn’t track how many people are killed by police. (The FBI does track “justifiable” police homicides and pegs the number at about 400 per year.)

The site went on to break down independently-gathered statistics to suggest that police have killed about 1,250 people in the “line of duty” since May 1, 2013. The site notes that the figure is not directly comparable to the FBI’s own “justifiable homicide” tally.

The Wall Street Journal compiled its own statistics for the years between 2007 and 2012, and also found that the FBI numbers were low. It suggested the bureau’s numbers were lower than those compiled from the 110 largest police agencies in the country.

Beyond debate, however, is that interactions between the public and police are more closely watched than ever before.

Scores of websites and Facebook groups monitor and compile reports of police incidents.

The Cato Institute compiles daily accounts of reported police misconduct. Gawker has a list of every unarmed person of colour killed by police since 1999.

So, yes. The public is watching police more closely. In today’s society, everyone is watching everything more closely.

The issue resonates in America most of all, but the same debate is ongoing in Canada.

Last year’s death of Sammy Yatim still stands out, as do several other fatal incidents.

In Yatim’s case, the public nature of his death – while standing alone on a streetcar surrounded by police – prompted public debate. Several videos of the incident were released publicly, prompting massive protest in the streets of Toronto. An officer faces charges in the shooting, and the debate continues despite the eventual court decision.

Is it right to blame every police officer of wrongdoing? Of course not, and no right-minded person does. But it is also not reasonable to expect the public from expressing outrage when they have grown outraged at specific incidents, nor is it reasonable to expect media to ignore that outrage.

Anti-police rhetoric isn’t helpful, neither is pro-police propaganda. What is needed is a rational conversation and reasonable steps to improve the relationship between the police and public.

And the understanding that that conversation will inevitably happen in the public spotlight.