Clarke reacted to the violence in Baltimore, Chicago, talk of a police slowdown in Baltimore, and the killing of two police officers in Louisiana and New Mexico with, "Welcome to President Obama's 21st century transformation of the institution of policing, and it's been a disaster, unnecessary black carnage is what we saw this weekend. And that [Baltimore] officer...hit the nail on the head, that is the mind-set of not just him, and not just the Baltimore Police Department, but a growing number of officers across the country who are tired of having all of the maladies and the pathologies of the American ghetto, the Baltimore ghetto, the Chicago ghetto, the Milwaukee ghetto, piled on them. We ask them to go down and do an impossible job, and then when they do, and things go wrong, which they can in this imperfect world, we want to come down on them, and that's what that officer is talking about. Look, that officer -- and no officer's going to give up on their community in terms of policing, but it's pretty obvious to me the officers of the Baltimore Police Department have given up on Commissioner Batts. He abandoned them, he said that they were part of the problem, you look at some of the other cities going on -- police officers all across America are watching this, they don't want to end up on a memorial wall. They don't want to lose their lives or some serious injury doing this, even though we know that that is one of the byproducts of policing the American ghetto."
He added, "ever since the days of Ferguson, this thing has been politicized, and that's what the American police officer's having problems with right now. It's not being -- taking the evidence and taking the statements and applying that to the rule of law. It's now this -- almost this mob rule that wants, not justice, they want revenge."