The elephant in the room, the fundamental to which we must never refer, is propensity toward criminality. It is simply a fact that blacks, and particularly young black men, engage in lawless conduct, very much including violent conduct, at rates (by percentage of population) significantly higher than do other racial or ethnic groups.

This is not a matter of conjecture. Crime gets reported by victims; the police don’t invent it, they investigate it. Overwhelmingly, the victims of black crime are black people. Indeed, as Heather Mac Donald relates in her essential book, The War on Cops, only 4 percent of black homicide victims are killed in police interactions. If African-American parents were really having “the talk” that is pertinent to protecting their children, it would have to involve the reality that those children are overwhelmingly more likely to be shot by other black youths. The police are having “police involved” confrontations with young black men largely because black communities demand police protection — and understandably so.

What would happen if police were to default from their duty to serve and protect — the position demagogues are increasingly pressuring cops into. Then, naturally, we would hear the alternative “narrative”: that American society had abandoned its most oppressed communities to a dystopia of crime, poverty, drug abuse, and hopelessness — and don’t you dare mention who is doing the oppressing.

To brand the cops as villains regardless of whether they are active or passive is play-acting, not problem-solving.