Curt Flewelling, FISM News 

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Larry Cosme, president of the Federal Law Enforcement Officers Association (FLEOA), is urging President Biden to take the opportunity of Tuesday’s State of the Union speech to “paint policing in a positive light.”

The top cop, fresh off of a law enforcement meeting with Attorney General Merrick Garland, told Fox News Digital, “I think the message in the [State of the Union] should be: Listen, there are positive folks out there. There are good people out there that are willing to do this job for the betterment of the community that they serve, and that’s the American public.”

The groups represented at the roundtable meeting were the Fraternal Order of Police, the International Association of Chiefs of Police, the Major Cities Chiefs Association, and the  National Organization of Black Law Enforcement Executives.

The topics discussed at the meeting were President Biden’s 2022 executive order on policing and the recent horrific killing of Tyre Nichols at the hands of five Memphis police officers.

Tensions between law enforcement and the community have been high in the past three years, largely sparked by the death of George Floyd in Minneapolis, MN.  Floyd was killed while in police custody, and his death set off a summer of massive protests across the country.

Many of these demonstrations led to deadly clashes with police and “defund the police” policies in many municipalities.  Although some cities have reversed course and realized that these actions have actually led to more crime, some have not.

This ongoing unrest has resulted in major retention and recruitment issues in police forces across the nation. Cosme feels that Biden has a golden opportunity to ease this tension with positive rhetoric on Tuesday night.

The FLEOA president said, “A fix would be for Biden to show ‘strong support for the efforts of law enforcement’ especially as crime continues to rise nationwide and as the country grapples with the fentanyl crisis.”

Although the subject of policing will be addressed on Tuesday, what President Biden will say about it remains to be seen. State of the Union speeches typically feature a whole lot of pandering to a wide array of groups, usually affiliated with the president’s party.

Any message that paints law enforcement in a positive way may not be well received by many in the Democrat party.