Chris Christie said that police officers are afraid to get out of their cars and enforce the law of because of increased scrutiny, piggybacking Wednesday night on prior statements by FBI director James Comey, which suggested that officers are holding back from doing their jobs.
FBI director James Comey said the rise of violent crime in certain cities was due to less aggressive policing, which he argued was a result of heightened scrutiny of police officers over the last year after a series of deaths of black men.
"Let's talk about something that happened this week in the news," Christie said during Wednesday night's CNBC Republican debate. "You know, the president's appointed FBI director has said this week that because of a lack of support for politicians like the president of the United States, that police officers are afraid to get out of their cars, that they're afraid to enforce the law.
"And he says, the president's appointee, that crime is going up because of this, and when the president of the United States gets out to speak about this, does he support police officers? Does he stand for law enforcement? No, he doesn't."
On Tuesday, Obama praised law enforcement at a gathering of the International Association of Chiefs of Police in Chicago. He said measures to reduce incarceration, push gun control, and change sentencing laws were being implemented to make officer's jobs easier.
“Too often law enforcement gets scapegoated for the broader failures of society and our criminal justice system,” Obama said. “It is possible for us to come up with strategies to effectively reduce the damage of the drug trade without relying solely on incarceration.”
Comey described a so-called "Ferguson effect," in which officers are reluctant to do their jobs effectively because of the rise of anti-police rhetoric and fear an interaction could go viral.
At the IACP gathering, Comey backed off his comments about the Ferguson effect, saying law enforcement office could learn from Black Lives Matter, "to see the world through the eyes of people who are not in our line of work and see how they might perceive us.”
On Face The Nation, Christie said there was no "Ferguson effect" in New Jersey, because he tells police officers to do their jobs. And Christie used his platform Wednesday night to showcase his stance as a law-and-order conservative.
"The number one job of the president is to protect the safety and security of the American people," Christie said. "This president has failed, and when I'm in the Oval Office, police officers will know they have the support of the president of the United States.
"That's the real moral authority we need in the Oval Office."