The Republican presidential candidate Chris Christie said on Sunday the Black Lives Matter protest movement was creating an environment that could put police officers at risk.

Speaking on CBS, he said: “I don’t believe that movement should be justified when they are calling for the murder of police officers.”

He also accused President Obama of supporting the movement and encouraging “lawlessness” while not backing up law enforcement.



Protests under the Black Lives Matter banner have coalesced around a number of deaths of African American people, most often unarmed, at the hands of police officers.

The movement first organized after the 2012 shooting of Trayvon Martin, an unarmed teen, by George Zimmerman, a neighborhood watch leader who was later acquitted of charges regarding Martin’s death.

Other high-profile deaths have included those of Michael Brown in Ferguson, Missouri and Eric Garner in Staten Island, in New York City. No officer was charged over the deaths of Brown and Garner, leading to protests and – in Ferguson – extensive civil unrest.

In September, Black Lives Matter said in a statement that conservatives were trying to turn the movement into a danger to officers.



“We’re targeting the brutal system of policing, not individual police,” the movement said on its Facebook page. “The Black Lives Matter Network seeks to end the system of policing that allows for unchecked violence against black people.”

Christie, the governor of New Jersey and a former US attorney, presents himself as a tough voice on law and order issues. He is nonetheless well down in polls regarding the 15-strong Republican presidential field.

On Sunday he said Black Lives Matter was “creating” an environment, as, he said, some of its supporters had chanted for the death of police.



Obama last week defended Black Lives Matter, urging the nation to take police treatment of black Americans seriously.



“We, as a society, particularly given our history, have to take this seriously,” Obama said.

The movement has become an issue in the presidential campaign. Some have taken its name as an implication that other people’s lives don’t matter, and respond by saying: “All lives matter.”

The Democratic presidential hopeful Martin O’Malley initially took that tack but apologized in the summer. At the Democratic presidential debate earlier this month, he joined the party’s other presidential hopefuls in giving a nod to the movement. African Americans overwhelmingly vote for Democrats.

“Black lives matter, and we have a lot of work to do to reform our criminal justice system, and to address race relations in our country,” O’Malley said.

A number of instances of alleged police brutality towards people of color have been caught on police body cameras or on mobile-phone cameras wielded by members of the public, fueling a movement driven in large part by social media.

On Friday, the FBI director, James Comey, attracted criticism when he told an audience of law students in Chicago police were struggling to cope with violent crime because “a chill wind” had “blown through law enforcement over the last year and that wind is surely changing behavior.

“In today’s YouTube world,” Comey asked, “are officers reluctant to get out of their cars and do the work that controls violent crime?”

In answer, Amnesty International USA’s executive director, Steven W Hawkins, released a statement which said: “Rather than making unsubstantiated claims that hinder dialogue and constructive criticism of police practices, what is urgently needed is an official collection and publication of nationwide statistics on the use of force by police.

“We also need President Obama and the Department of Justice to support the creation of a national commission to conduct a nationwide review of police use of lethal force laws, policies and training and practices, as well as a thorough review and reform of oversight and accountability mechanisms.”

