The Black Lives Matter movement is getting black people, and police officers, killed.

The groundwork was laid with Trayvon Martin, a black teenager who jumped  Neighborhood Watch volunteer George Zimmerman for following him. Martin was straddling Zimmerman, raining down blows on his head when Zimmerman managed to draw his gun and shoot his attacker.

Although Zimmerman wasn't a cop, the fact that an "unarmed" teen was shot and killed by Zimmerman,  a "white Hispanic," stoked racial tensions.

It was made even worse with Michael Brown in Ferguson, Mo., and the media's embrace of lies that the 6'4", 300 lb. Brown had his hands up and begging police officer Darren Wilson not to shoot when he was killed. All available evidence shows that Brown had tried to take Wilson's gun reaching inside the trooper's car and that Brown was charging Wilson, arms down, when he was shot and killed.

Bad cops exist

Cops are human beings, not angels or saints. Bad cops exist.

People have every right to be outraged at the death of Walter Scott last year in South Carolina. A video shot by a bystander showed Officer Michael T. Slager shoot a fleeing Scott and then planting his own stun gun next to Scott's body.

Just this week, the ACLU filed a lawsuit against three Connecticut state troopers who were caught on an audio recording conspiring to trump up charges against a man using a sign to alert drivers of an upcoming police checkpoint.

This fact is not a license for disobedience.

Do Black Lives Matter?

The Black Lives Matter movement has legitimized resisting arrest. After all, if every encounter between an African-American and a police officer is nothing more than racism, then just about any resistance is justified.

This is getting blacks killed.

The latest case is in Tulsa, Okla., where Terence Crutcher was shot and killed by police after walking back to his car, in defiance of police orders, and then lowering his hand to his waist and appearing to reach to open the door of his vehicle.

Bob Owens outlines the reasons this latest case ended up the way it did.

We don’t know precisely what Terence Crutcher said or did, or if he did anything at the precise moment he was tased and shot.

What we do know is that police officers will not let a non-compliant suspect return to their vehicle as a safety concern, and that by refusing obvious police commands to stop and comply with officers, and by instead choosing to return to his vehicle, Terence Crutcher greatly raised tensions and reasonably put officers on a much higher threat level than they would have been if he stayed with Officer [Betty] Shelby in front of her cruiser.

Officers have every reason to believe that a suspect returning to a vehicle against their orders is attempting to retrieve a weapon. They cannot know until after the fact if the belligerent person they’re dealing with is armed or not.

Crutcher would very likely be alive today had he obeyed the police. Police commands are not optional. If you think you're being mistreated or harassed by law enforcement, this is not the time to protest or be defiant. It's far better for you to get a lawyer at a later time than for your family to get one...because you're dead.

The myth of the "unarmed" man

Brock Lesnar is 39 years old, 6'2" tall and weighs 266 lbs. He's a former college wrestler. He's a trained Mixed Martial Arts fighter. His nickname is "The Beast."

Even unarmed, if he came after me, I'd shoot him. I'd shoot him a lot.

This is a reductio ad absurdum. Not even Lesnar's TV lawyer, Paul Heyman, would attempt to argue that Lesnar is somehow harmless or an innocent simply because he did not have a firearm.

The constant referrals to Michael Brown as an "unarmed teen" are an attempt by supporters and the media to put a patina of innocence on a 6'4", 300 lb-man who was charging a cop.

This is also the point where I note that more people are killed in the United States each year with fists and legs than with rifles of all kinds, including the much-maligned AR-15.

It doesn't matter if a suspect doesn't have a gun, especially if it is impossible for police to know that fact. Reaching into your pockets, waistband or vehicle in defiance of police orders is an excellent way to get shot.

Do Black Lives Matter II?

There's an oft-cited meme on Twitter that the best thing  about America since we elected a black president is "all the racial healing."

Of course, there hasn't been a lot of racial healing, and President Barack Obama has done little to help the situation (and likely contributed much to the division) by reflexively chiding law-enforcement in many cases before the facts are known.

The latest year for which we have data, 2015, shows that 258 blacks were killed by police that year. Nearly 6,000 were killed by other blacks.

The rash of homicides in Obama's adopted hometown of Chicago—topping 500 for the year as of Labor Day weekend—are not being driven by officer-involved shootings.

To paraphrase the Good book, blacks killed by police are the mote in the law enforcement's eye. The log is black-on-black murder in the black community's eye.

Cops lives matter too

The attitude in the video below isn't going to contribute to restraint on those stressful situations where police encounter blacks suspected of felonies.

Want to make cops more nervous around black suspects? More likely to make a fatal mistake? This certainly helps.

And cops have reason to be nervous. From Dallas to Philadelphia to Baton Rouge to New York, police officers are being targeted by unhinged individuals influenced by the lies and distortions of the Black Lives Matter movement.

Fixing the problem

The solution starts with the black community getting its house in order. Reducing the out-of-wedlock births. Increasing educational opportunities. Reducing black-on-black crime.

How exactly to accomplish this is far beyond me and many smarter people who have been thinking about the issue for decades.

But the Black Lives Matter movement is not focusing on any of those issues. They're focused on police officers who, by and large, are trying to help the black community.

Black Lives Matter is not part of the solution, they're part of the problem.