The Volokh Conspiracy
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"Despite Police Pushback, Biden Presses On With Visit To Syracuse After Two Cops Were Just Slain"
From the Daily Caller:
Biden is set to travel to the city on Thursday to promote the CHIPS and Science Act and announce a grant delivered by the legislation, according to CNY Central News. The president opted not to delay the trip following the loss Syracuse Police Officer Michael Jensen and Onondaga County Lt. Sheriff's Deputy Michael Hoosock in the line of duty on April 14 during a shootout.
Because officers are still grieving the loss, local law enforcement expressed worry to the White House over the timing of the trip, Jeff Moran, the president of the Syracuse Police Benevolent Association, the union representing the city's officers, told the Daily Caller.
"The department expressed their concerns to the Biden administration regarding his visit, and the quick turnaround of a Syracuse police officer being buried and an Onondaga County Sheriff's deputy being buried, and then the manpower that it would take and everything that our members have been through in the past week. Those concerns were expressed to the Biden administration and the Biden administration elected to move forward with the visit," Moran told the Daily Caller.
The article also quotes several Republican members of Congress who are echoing this objection.
I sympathize with the police officers' grief; it's a department of 400 officers, so I expect that many officers knew the officers who were killed a week ago. But I've got to say that I don't really support this as a basis for asking the President not to show up. Grief or no, I imagine the police force is up to the job, which is to provide protection both for ordinary events and unusual events, whatever recent events might have been.
I know we often see college students asking for exams to be postponed because bad things have happened. I'm pretty skeptical about such requests, but I certainly wouldn't extend them to adult workers, especially ones of whom we expect a great degree of professionalism and stoicism.
