Black Lives Matter protesters laid siege to a number of cities over the weekend including my hometown: Memphis, Tennessee.

They shut down the Interstate 40 bridge over the Mississippi River, stranding thousands of motorists for hours in sweltering heat.

Blocking a roadway is a crime under Tennessee law.

Yet Memphis police officers were told to stand down and allow the agitators to block the Hernando-Desoto Bridge. They used to call that kind of behavior aiding and abetting.

Not a single person was arrested.

Police say it was a peaceful protest. But photographs taken from the bridge showed a very different situation. In one instance, young men climbed atop a tractor-trailer, raising their fists in defiance.

I wonder if the driver of that tractor-trailer thought it was a peaceful demonstration?

Television station WMC reported that protesters even blocked a car trying to escort a child to St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital. Apparently that child’s life did not matter to the protesters.

The car was eventually allowed to pass — but only after police intervened.

We have no idea how many emergency responses were hampered by the gridlock created by the BLM crowd. We have no idea how many people missed family events or missed work because they were trapped on the interstate.

In St. Paul, Minnesota, at least 21 police officers were injured during a “full-scale riot” on Interstate 94, according to the Star-Tribune.

Violent thugs hurled rocks, concrete and rebar at officers as they protested the killing of Philando Castile.

One of those officers suffered a broken vertebra after someone dropped a concrete block on his head.

Could someone explain to me how fracturing a police officer’s spine and preventing a child from getting to the hospital advances the Black Lives Matter agenda?

The police-involved shootings in Baton Rouge and Minnesota were terrible tragedies.

If investigators determine the officers broke they law, they should and must be brought to justice.

But both shootings are still under investigation — so, to be honest, no one knows for certain what happened.

Yet, the mainstream media, the Obama administration and the professional race agitators have once again rushed to judgment — just like they did in Ferguson, Missouri.

They never let a crisis go to waste, do they?

It feels like our nation has been sucker-punched. You can see it on people’s faces. Sorrow. Frustration. Anger. Helplessness.

I understand that frustration — but it does not give us a license to disobey the law.

Peaceful protesting is one thing. Domestic terrorism is another.

Instead of turning a blind eye, the Memphis Police Department should’ve sealed off both ends of the bridge and arrested every single person not in a vehicle.

But that’s not what happened.

The rule of law matters. Without it, we’ve got anarchy.