All of the above

© 2014 Oliver Tacke, Flickr | CC-BY | via Wylio

Police do a dangerous and important job, and have to protect themselves and can get shot or attacked out of nowhere. At the same time, people are sometimes shot needlessly and unjustifiably by police, and they are disproportionately black.

Police protect us, strive to keep our communities safe, do truly heroic things every day, and experience trauma that others cannot fathom. At the same time, police statistically arrest black people far more often for lower level crimes that they commit at the same rates as their white counterparts.

Within the last year, police officers have been targeted simply for being police officers, and have begun to be afraid to do the job we depend on them to do. At the same time, violent crime and police deaths are statistically at a decades-long low.

Black individuals, especially young black men, face prejudicial treatment and unfairly high levels of suspicion and scrutiny, and are 6 times more likely than white people to be the victims of violent crime. At the same time, black people also COMMIT violent crimes at a disproportionate rate, accounting for 52% of homicides but only 13% of the population.

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All of the above statements are true. They CAN all be true, and they ARE all true. Stop drinking the Kool-Aid of those trying to tell you that only one side of the narrative is true and turning you against your own fellow citizens as domestic enemies. The rage and division that these one-sided narratives produce help no one, other than the politicians who feed off of it.