Joseph Thomas Johnson-Shanks, a Black Lives Matter protester who attended attempted cop-killer Michael Brown’s funeral, murdered a Kentucky State Trooper who was trying to help him:

A Kentucky State Police trooper wanted to do a favor for the driver he pulled over late at night. It turned out the man was driving with a suspended license, so the lawman was arranging for overnight lodging for the man and his fellow travelers, including two children.

Those plans soon unraveled, with tragic results. During the stop on a rural stretch of interstate, the driver took off. What ensued was a chain of events that led to the deaths of the lawman and the suspect, authorities said.

Trooper Joseph Cameron Ponder, 31, was shot by the suspect during a second stop late Sunday in western Kentucky, Trooper Jay Thomas, a state police spokesman, said Monday.

Ponder, a Navy veteran, had been on the state police force less than a year.

“He was trying to help them out, and for an unknown reason, the driver fled,” Thomas said.

“At the initial stop, it was his intent to put them all in a hotel without having to apprehend the driver,” Thomas added. “After he initiated the pursuit, I’m sure his mind was changed on that.”

Ponder made the initial stop because Joseph Thomas Johnson-Shanks was driving at a speed of 103 MPH on a suspended license. Instead of arresting him on the spot, Ponder was attempting to find Johnson-Shanks a room and avoid arresting him.

After Johnson-Shanks murdered Ponder he became the subject of an extensive manhunt, which ended when he refused to put down his (illegally possessed) handgun and was shot by police.

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We’ve had a rash of police shootings in the past year that are tied to the anger directed at police from the progressive-funded and supported “Black Lives Matter” movement. Leftist George Soros has poured at least $33 million into the anti-police, anti-civility and typically racist movement via numerous front groups.

President Barack Obama has given the movement tangible support as well, from using the Department of Justice to “investigate” those citizens and law enforcement personnel who defended themselves against violent felons supported by the movement, to sending Administration officials to the funerals of these same violent criminals. The Obama administration has done this while avoiding sending representatives to the funerals of murdered law enforcement officers killed by “Black Lives Matter”-affiliated radicals. The decision to send representatives to attend the funerals of violent felons instead of police officers killed in the line of duty would seem to draw a very clear picture of which side the Administration supports in a developing war between law and order.

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Not all Black Lives Matter supporters are physically violent, of course, but many are either spreading rhetoric that calls for violence against police, or are turning a deaf ear to that rhetoric. They are intentionally driving a wedge between law enforcement and minority communities, and the worst of them are openly inciting violence against law enforcement and civil society itself while espousing black nationalist rhetoric that mirrors that of racist groups such as the Ku Klux Klan.

This liberal stoked anger may play a role in the recent uptick in violence in many parts of the nation.

Be safe, be trained, be armed, and watch over those law enforcement officers protecting your communities.