It is wrong to assume and to argue that there are NO decent, moral police officers. Of course there are. It is equally wrong to assume and to argue that there are no abusive, corrupt and brutal police officers. Of course there are. Why is the fact that there are both good, hardworking police AND racist, indecent officers so difficult for people to grasp? The BLM movement is not an indictment of ALL police everywhere. It's an indictment of both individually abusive individuals and of a system that for decades has protected those individuals and continues to do so.

When police refuse to acknowledge the tragic murders of innocent black men at the hands of police, and when they try to scare people by claiming no one "would be safe to walk across the streets of America" they don't persuade anyone. Instead this kind of blind defense in the face of incontrovertible evidence of the cruelty and misuse of lethal power on the part of some officers, only convinces us that there IS a systematic problem that MUST be covered up at all costs. Acknowledging the legitimate fear, sorrow and anger on the part of people of color for police violence perpetrated against them would go a lot further in effectively defending the police than the attempt to dismiss this reality, which sounds like the tone-deaf propaganda that it is.