On Saturday, December 20, NYPD officers Rafael Ramos and Wenjian Liu were shot and killed in their patrol car in Brooklyn. While this is a tragedy, there are some valuable lessons we could learn from the event.

What is one thing that everyone is constantly on in today’s society? Social media. We see so much content on social media, we can no longer determine what’s real or fake, serious or a joke. That problem right there played a role in this recent shooting, as alleged gunman Ismaaiyl Brinsley posted a picture of a silver handgun on Instagram just hours before the shooting. Brinsley’s caption on his photo not only referenced the killings of Mike Brown and Eric Garner and showed that Brinsley had a strong bias against police officers, but it also foreshadowed the shooting of the two officers. Think about how many people read that caption on that photo. Think about many people had the chance to save two innocent police officers from death. Even if this was a race motivated killing, it didn’t make sense. The cops that killed Garner and Brown were white; the officers that Brinsley killed were African-American and Asian. No family should have to fear for the life of their loved one, especially one who is supposed to be protecting the law. In this case, officers Ramos and Liu were doing exactly what they should have been doing at the time. They were sitting outside a housing development in Brooklyn due to a recent rise in shootings when Brinsley walked up to the car, assumed a “shooting stance,” and shot those two officers in the head. What did officer Ramos do to deserve that? What did officer Liu do to that man to be killed in such a way? Nothing.

What if we didn’t have any police officers? No police officers in America at all. What do you think would happen to this country? We would fall apart. America has always had a system of law enforcement. Police officers intend on keeping us in a safe, friendly environment. They may not always make the right choice, but who does? Everyone is so quick to judge everyone else based on what they have done that no one wants to stop and think about what they would have done in the same situation. Citizens are supposed to look up to a police officer. A police officer’s job is to protect us and serve us, who doesn’t like to have a figure they can look up to and feel safe doing so?

In recent events, people have only been focused on what the police officer has done. People don’t care what is going on at the time, they only focus on what the cop is doing. I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again: cops don’t always make the right choice. Who does? No one. With that in mind, blindly supporting the police can be dangerous. Blindly supporting a random citizen can be equally as dangerous, if not more. As a country, we have lost the ability to trust not just our government, but other citizens as well. If we really want to end “police brutality,” then we need to become a more peaceful country. We must learn to trust each other. If we wish to change the way something works, we can’t automatically resort to violence. Violence gets you nowhere, as seen by the movements of Malcolm X compared to Martin Luther King Jr. Malcolm X tried using violent actions and didn’t get anywhere. MLK used peaceful ways and achieved so much in his life.

The blunt, disgusting truth about this tragic event is that two police officers were shot in the head at point blank range. What questions are being raised about the nation? Where are the riots and protests? Where are Al Sharpton and Eric Holden to jump down the throats of citizens? Of course all lives matter, but when criminals are seen as the heroes and cops are seen as the bad guys, then there is obviously something wrong. Let’s see just how many citizens, basketball players, and football players are going to get their “#coplivesmatter” shirts.