Following the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks, our country rallied around our first responders, most notably the police officers and firefighters who rushed into the Twin Towers in an attempt to save as many Americans as possible.

As a country we watched, horrified, as the towers collapsed, taking the lives of hundreds of cops and firefighters. As we collectively mourned the loss of nearly 3,000 citizens we also held those first responders in reverence, which lasted for years.

But something began to change during Barack Obama’s presidency. No sooner than he took office, he was embroiled in his first race scandal: He jumped the gun, so to speak, and blamed a white veteran police sergeant for acting “stupidly” after briefly detaining a black Harvard professor and personal friend who was suspected of breaking into a home. Turned out that the home belonged to the professor, Henry Louis Gates Jr., but the officer didn’t know that at the time.

Afterward, Obama never missed an opportunity to jump into an issue involving white officers and black suspects, purposely inflaming local situations of which he knew nothing about for purely political gain.

Democrat leftists picked up where he left off in the years since, doubling and tripling down on police demonization, and the results were both sad and predictable: More harm to police officers.

And death.

According to a new FBI analysis, “more police officers were intentionally killed in the line of duty in 2021, President Biden’s first year in office, than any year since 1995,” The Daily Wire reported on Monday, adding:

The FBI’s LEOKA (law enforcement officers killed in action) data found 73 officers were intentionally killed in 2021, as the Heartland Institute pointed out in their analysis of the data, noting, “We found felonious killings of law enforcement officers skyrocketed in 2021, increasing by more than 58.7 percent in a single year. In 2021, 73 law enforcement officers were feloniously killed, compared to 46 in 2020 and 48 in 2019.”

The organization noted further that in 1995, 74 officers were killed intentionally and 2011 was the only year between 1995 and 2021 (smack dab in the middle of the Obama years) that more than 70 officers were killed (72 were murdered in 2011).

“In 2021, 32 officers were feloniously killed in an ambush or unprovoked attack, compared to 10 such killings in 2020 and seven in 2019,” the Heartland Institute added.

“Although more data will need to be provided by the FBI and local agencies before the dramatic increase in felonious police killings can be fully understood, the LEOKA data seem to indicate one of the primary explanations for the increase is a sharp rise in the number of ambushes and unprovoked attacks on police,” said the organization.

Jason Johnson, president of the Law Enforcement Legal Defense Fund, explained the disturbing data in an interview with Fox News.

“We believe it’s a combination … of the George Floyd protests — riots, if you will; a general feeling of a preference for less law enforcement; and less prosecution and less policing,” Johnson explained.

“Law enforcement officers have essentially been marginalized and demoralized and cast aside and encouraged not to enforce the law. And so we’ve seen massive jumps in the homicide rate in cities across America,” he said.

“He added that ‘it’s natural’ rising homicide rates in major U.S. cities have ‘also resulted in many more officers being assaulted because … a lot of leaders in these cities and leaders in Congress and leaders in the White House have really voiced a lack of respect for law enforcement officers,’” Fox News reported.

Johnson continued, “Police don’t expect you to be supportive if what they’ve done is wrong. That’s certainly not what we’re asking for. What we asked for is that the president and the administration not make a premature, judgmental and frankly wrong comments … next time a viral video comes out..”

“Until and unless we see some leadership — both in the White House and in individual cities, district attorneys that are willing to hold police accountable when they’re wrong but are willing to support them when they’re right — we’re going to continue to speak up not only with increasing levels of violent crime but increasing numbers of assaults and the killing of law enforcement officers,” he said.

Nothing will crater a civil society faster than lawlessness and a dearth of law enforcement. And since Democrat-voting leftists have declared America, as founded, irredeemable, we can’t help but think their marginalization of police is intentional.