Rep. King: Obama wrong on ‘endemic racism’

President Obama and Mayor Bill de Blasio’s (D) rhetoric about policing contributed to the deaths of two New York City officers over the weekend, Rep. Pete King (R-N.Y.) said Monday.

“The president says we have to have a conversation on race, and then he says its up to the police to change their tactics and their methods, implying that the police are the ones that are always wrong,” King said Monday on Fox News’s “America’s Newsroom.”

King said statements from Obama and de Blasio about the grand jury’s decision in the death of Eric Garner — a black man in Staten Island, N.Y., who died after being put in a chokehold by a police officer — added to tensions.

“Whatever was right or wrong about Staten Island,” he said, “it was wrong of the mayor and the president to imply that somehow this involves race, that it was part of some endemic racism in the police department or in our society.”

The New York City Police Department on Monday is mourning the loss of two officers who were ambushed in a patrol car by a man who killed them before turning the gun on himself.

Reports say the suspect, who had a lengthy criminal record, posted references to Garner and the police controversy in Ferguson, Mo., before killing the two officers.

The deaths have reopened the debate over the controversial decisions by grand juries not to indict white officers in the deaths of Garner and Michael Brown in Ferguson.

The public debate over race and police tactics spurred by those cases has created a charged atmosphere in the country, with a new Gallup poll released Friday showing that 13 percent of Americans consider race relations the most important problem in America. That’s a dramatic increase from 1 percent in November, and the highest since the Rodney King riots in 1992.

King, whose father was a police officer, said he feared that the animus towards officers could devolve into the situation in the 1970s, where some officers were targeted. He said it’s important for elected officials to praise police officers to help shift the public’s perception of them.

“The climate that the mayor is creating, it’s not intentional on his part, but the reality is that it’s there and this climate is attracting the mad men in society and also giving a legitimacy to these violent protestors,” he said.

“Police have done more to save minority lives than anyone in this country.”