Patrick Lynch’s full speech at the Republican National Convention

Patrick Lynch, the president of the Police Benevolent Association, spoke on the final night of the Republican National Convention on Aug. 27, 2020. President Lynch was speaking on behalf of 50,000 active and retired New York City police officers.

Transcript

We are the men and women who wear a shield on our chests and put ourselves in harm’s way to protect our city, every single day. We are endorsing our president, Donald J. Trump, for re-election because the stakes have never been higher.

Like cops across this country, we are staring down the barrel of a public safety disaster. More than one thousand people have been shot and three hundred killed in New York City so far this year. These aren’t numbers. These are people. A father gunned down while holding his seven-year-old daughter’s hand. A beloved neighborhood peacemaker killed by a stray bullet. A 17-year-old who made all the right choices, who worked hard to go to college and earn a sports scholarship, murdered before he could tell his mother the news. A one-year old child shot dead in his stroller.

Every day, our communities are asking us: Why is this happening? The answer is simple: The Democrats have walked away from us. Democratic politicians have surrendered our streets and institutions. The loudest voices have taken control, and our so-called “leaders” are scrambling to catch up to them.

In city after city, they have slashed police budgets. They have hijacked and dismantled the criminal justice system.  They have passed laws that made it impossible for police officers to do our job. The violence and chaos we’re seeing now isn’t a side effect. It’s actually the goal. The radical left doesn’t really want better policing. They don’t really care about making the justice system fairer.  What they want is no policing. What they want is a justice system that stops working altogether.

Wherever Democrats are in power, the radical left is getting exactly what they want. And our country is suffering for it. I have been a New York City police officer for 36 years. I’ve never seen our streets go this bad so quickly. I’ve never heard from so many cops, from every corner of the country, who are saying the same thing: “Our hands are tied.”

Something has to change. If we are going to turn the tide and restore law and order, we cannot fall into the left’s trap. There is nobody who hates bad cops more than good cops, but that doesn’t matter to the radical left. To them, we’re all bad, because we’re all blue. Their anti-law enforcement campaign isn’t about a single incident.

It’s about a message:

The message is: police officers are the enemy.

The message is: criminals have the right to resist arrest.

The message is: if you victimize a vulnerable person, the justice system will not hold you accountable.

The criminals have heard that message, and they are taking full advantage. We must stop that message. We must expose the left’s lies about police officers and the job we do. And we will do that, because we have something they don’t.

We have a real leader. We have President Donald J. Trump. Unlike the Democrats, who are running in fear of the mob in the street, President Trump has never apologized for standing up for law and order. Unlike the Democrats, who froze in the face of rioting and looting, President Trump gives law enforcement the support and tools to put a stop to it – period, end of story.

It has never been harder to be a police officer in this country. But there are two things that keep us going:

We look at the victims, the vulnerable, the regular working people who count on us. We know we can’t let them down.

And we hear the words of our President, who says to cops everywhere “I will never let you down.”

We’ve been fortunate to have his powerful voice defending police officers. We know that we absolutely cannot afford to lose it. When it comes to your safety, your families’ safety and the safety of all Americans, there is no other choice.

You won’t be safe in Joe Biden’s America. You can have four more years of President Trump. Or you can have no safety, no justice, no peace.