Ferguson, Missouri and Staten Island, New York were, for a time, just two locations in America without much significance. However, that fundamentally changed after the recent policing incidents in those two areas. Protests took place across the United States, and an international community attentively watched how race and police-citizen relations would evolve. The attention slowly started to wither. Then, everything quickly changed. 

In late December, the assassinations of two police officers in Brooklyn, New York, shook the United States to its core again. Emotional rhetoric started to flow again from those—including prominent Brandeis student leaders—who recklessly bashed whole judicial and law enforcement institutions in our country. It revitalized an environment deeply odious and divisive, warranting something being said in defense of those who risk their lives every day to defend us. 

Let me start with a clarification: I don’t believe that our nation’s policing and legal systems are perfect. Institutions created by man are fallible by nature and proposals to reform laws and make policing more effective deserve their day in the court of public opinion. 

Likewise, I also believe that the lack of an indictment in the chokehold case of Mr. Garner is a travesty and, indeed, a miscarriage of justice. The case justifies shining a light on biased district attorneys who do a major disservice to the transparency of legal proceedings.

But these reasonable points of contention between genuinely well-intentioned people are eclipsed by the left-wing mob that is led by demagogues like Al Sharpton, surrogate of New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio. 

This mob has initiated a campaign to denigrate all police forces around the country. They are portrayed as entirely racist vigilantes who callously murder people of color without a sliver of evidence to corroborate that notion, outside the color of people’s skin. 

Civil discussion quickly becomes unattainable. This is especially shameful because debate on policing and crime is vital in order to move past racially divisive rhetoric towards real progress for Americans, who all wish to see law enforcement work for, rather than against them. 

The unfortunate truth, however, is that facts surrounding crime and policing are often compartmentalized into two categories by the loudest, most provocative voices in the policing debate. 

There are facts that are acceptable because they are politically and emotionally palatable and there are facts that are automatically dismissed as racist because they’re not politically correct. 

Yet facts that may be uncomfortable are still facts, making them crucial to understanding the current state of crime in our country and to dispelling myths promulgated by those with political agendas.

A common myth is a report by the Malcolm X Grassroots Movement which says that every 28 hours an unarmed black person is killed by police in the United States. A simple search on Politifact (hardly the bulwark of conservatives and the facts they use) rates the claim as unambiguously false, explaining: “the report [is] not an academic work [and] it included in its count deaths that were not the result of police killings. Further, the report only classified 136 of 313 deaths as unarmed, which does not support [the] claim that an unarmed black person is shot by police every 28 hours.” 

Aside from this myth, the overall rhetoric of the anti-cop movement paints police officers as racists who wantonly target blacks disproportionately. Just look at the signs or hear the chants from some of the “peaceful” protests across the country that criticize “racist killer cops” who don’t believe that black lives matter. 

Look at Sharpton, who, when referring to the NYPD, said: “the only way you make roaches run, you got to cut the light on.” All the loaded language culminated in the foreboding chant heard throughout the streets of New York City: “What do we want? Dead cops! When do we want them? Now!”

But if these protesters stand for the belief that all black lives matter, they have only addressed one issue. Another important problem has been ignored. When looking at a 2013 FBI Uniform Crime Report, black victims of murder were, 90 percent of the time, found to be killed by other blacks. 

Leftists must start discussing the crisis of black-on-black crime for the “black lives matter” meme to not seem disingenuous, hypocritical and opportunistic for those who just have a visceral hatred of the police. 

Additionally, consider what Jason Riley, a member of the Wall Street Journal’s Editorial Board, who is also black, wrote in a November editorial, citing FBI crime statistics: “Blacks commit violent crimes at 7 to 10 times the rate that whites do… Racial profiling and tensions between the police and poor black communities are real problems, but these are effects rather than causes, and they can’t be addressed without also addressing the extraordinarily high rates of black criminal behavior—yet such discussion remains taboo. Blacks who bring it up are sell-outs. Whites who mention it are racists.” 

Indeed, 2013 FBI homicide statistics conclude that black people make up 13 percent of the population but commit 50 percent of all murders in the United States. 

Combined with the aforementioned prominence of black-on-black crime, it becomes apparent that if activists believe black lives matter, they should focus their efforts on fighting straightforward crime in the black community. 

Biases in policing must be meaningfully addressed, but we must not prioritize that ahead of the very crimes, overwhelmingly more frequent, which the police strive to protect us from.

When the dust settles, it appears that Mayor de Blasio, Al Sharpton and others should direct their frustration to the crisis of black-on-black violence, not the cops. But liberal leaders instead scapegoat the police rather than address more complex issues devoid of easy answers or a catchy narrative.

Facts, as our second President John Adams once proclaimed, are stubborn things. Many variables surrounding policing and crime point to a situation in America that is nebulous at best, and, at worst, suggests that priorities by politicians and their confidants need to be realigned. 

But one thing is crystal clear: the invectives hurled at law enforcement need to stop. Stand with the men and women in blue.