When a false narrative replaces the truth, the results are downright devastating. “Police are the problem” is the dubious rhetoric widely disseminated by the likes of “social justice” groups like Black Lives Matter. And Americans fell for this lie after seeing the unjust death of George Floyd at the hands of four officers from the Minneapolis Police Department. The video footage was so shocking and emotionally disconcerting that it instantly evoked a cry for justice deep in the heart of everyone who witnessed it. This reality was borne out by the near-universal public condemnation of the police officers’ actions. In short, nobody has argued that what happened to Floyd was OK.

And yet, due to the media coverage, the various social-media virtue-signaling campaigns, and the widespread response of businesses across the nation, one could be led to believe there was widespread defense for these police officers’ actions.

But the truth is, all four officers were fired and subsequently arrested for murder. And yet, the calls for defunding the police continues — even as a father, grandfather, and mother tearfully question why, if black lives matter, those organizing these protests and loudly condemning the police and “systemic racism” don’t seem to care that their loved ones have died precisely because of a lack of policing. But this truth doesn’t fit the BLM narrative, so it is simply ignored or decried as a distraction from the “problem” of police reform.

It’s enough to make one wonder if BLM isn’t a shrewdly designed criminal conspiracy aimed at getting rid of law enforcement.

The leftist narrative on police has become so toxic that even schools are seeking to remove police presence from campuses supposedly for the students’ “safety.” As Seattle Public Schools Superintendent Denise Juneau explained, “While the focus on the School Emphasis Officer has been to build relationships and provide assistance to youth in crisis, the unintended consequence of their presence in our buildings could bring more distress to our young people.”

In St. Paul, Minnesota, public school-board member Steve Marchese dubiously asserted, “Many [students] see [police officers] as a hostile presence, as a traumatic presence, as a reminder of what they don’t want to engage with in schools, even if there are other students and staff who see them as someone who could keep them safe.” There’s no mention of a plan to challenge this absurd notion and, in turn, educate the students on the truth — that the police are there to serve and protect them.

Even black community leaders can see this reality. The president of the African-American Leadership Council in St. Paul, Tyrone Terrell, pointedly noted, “Nine times out of ten, it’s going to be a black child who is murdered in that school. We have guns in the schools, we have guns in the parking lot and we have guns one call away… The [School Resource Officers] are crucial to the schools.”

But in the stupid, simplistic mind of the “woke social justice” mob, unequal disparities between the different racial groups that make up the U.S. prison population mean that policing, not the high crime rates in these Democrat-run urban poverty plantations, is the cause of the problem.