A recent FBI study found that law enforcement officers around the country are "de-policing" due to the anti-police sentiment spurred by groups like Black Lives Matter.
The report by the FBI Office of Partner Engagement, titled "Assailant Study -- Mindsets and Behaviors," states the movement sparked by the 2014 police-involved shooting of Michael Brown in Ferguson, Missouri made it "socially acceptable to challenge and discredit the actions of law enforcement," according to The Washington Times.
The report concluded that many officers have made the decision to stop engaging in proactive policing.
The study, which was written in April, found that law enforcement officials "believe that defiance and hostility displayed by assailants toward law enforcement appears to be the new norm."
The report examined 50 incidents last year in which officers were killed in the line of duty. A majority of the assailants who used deadly force against officers did so to avoid being taken into custody, but an alarming 28 percent were motivated by hatred of police and a desire to "kill law enforcement."
"The assailants inspired by social and/or political reasons believed that attacking police officers was their way to ‘get justice’ for those who had been, in their view, unjustly killed by law enforcement," the study reads.
Those charged in the July 2016 mass shootings of police in Dallas and Baton Rouge said they were influenced by the Black Lives Matter movement, and their belief that law enforcement was targeting black males.
The report also found that drug decriminalization and reduced sentencing emboldened assailants, making them believe that consequences no longer exist for criminal acts.
"Across the country, law enforcement link the decriminalization of drugs to the increase in violent attacks on law enforcement," the study says.
