Anyone unsure why so many people of color are upset with the police, and suspicious of the American justice system, put your politics down, open your eyes and watch the videos.

There’s more to be said on another day about broken-windows policing. Garner was known to cops for selling loose cigarettes, though he wasn’t doing that when he was arrested and killed.

There is also more to be said about the dishonesty or intellectual confusion of activists, protesters and politicians who often appear to view cops as the only real criminals.

But fear of police and lost faith in justice are real, corrosive forces. That fear makes decent people of color feel that society places a lower value on their lives. It makes parents and their children fear the very people who are supposed to be protecting them. Good policing demands community buy-in, so perception itself matters.

The facts surrounding Rumain Brisbon's death — the ones that could be agreed upon as of Wednesday evening — follow a narrative familiar to a nation still reeling from the racially charged police incidents in Ferguson, Mo., New York City and elsewhere.

In Phoenix on Tuesday evening, a White police officer who was feeling threatened used lethal force on an unarmed Black man. The incident left the officer unharmed and Brisbon, 34, with two bullet wounds in his torso at a north Phoenix apartment complex.

When lethal force becomes the go-to for the police, when it becomes routine, when it becomes accepted by the power structure... when victims are demonized to excuse the police officers' actions... then we have lost what it means to be America. We are all guaranteed a fair and honest trial by our own Constitution, and the police that take it upon themselves to be judge, jury, and executioner have no business calling themselves Americans. They have more in common with the terrorists who use violence to strike fear into our psyches.