The violent, shooting incidents involving law enforcement, in the United States over the past several months have spawned what State Representative Ralph Watts calls a “very troubling environment in our society”.

He says after extensive review of the evidence it has become very clear that race was not the issue but some leaders are still focused on that.

“The rhetoric we hear from our national leaders about that (shooting death of Michael Brown) has been, in my opinion appalling.  The message that we’ve been getting from the federal authorities has been a little bit disconcerting because they tend to add fuel to the fire on those particular issues.”

Watts says the law enforcement community needs citizen support now more than ever.

“I’m going to support the police officers.  I’m going to support the chiefs of police.  I’m going to support the rights of the states to determine their own law enforcement activities under the laws of their state.  And when (Attorney General Eric) Holder threatens to take over a local police department and restructure it, that’s very disconcerting to me and I think that we need to stand up to that.”

The Representative says the state legislature can’t do anything directly, besides publically taking a position that says they’re going to support local law enforcement authorities, the Governor, department of corrections and says “until we see that our law enforcement authorities are completely out of bounds, I feel it is our obligations as citizens to support them.”