A ‘Black Lives’ Challenge

For three years, the rhetoric of the Black Lives Matter movement has grown more strident — and more life-threatening to police officers. The premeditated targeting and murder of police officers in Brooklyn, Dallas and now Baton Rouge are reprehensible acts of terrorism stoked by the worst elements lurking in the shadows of this movement.

We think the best of the BLMers have an honorable goal, seeking justice for all. But anyone looking at what’s now a series of murders — 10 blue deaths — can’t ignore the excessive rhetoric from the broader movement, which has focused mounting rage on the police.

Even Mayor de Blasio has condemned more extreme BLM rhetoric (though his pal Al Sharpton decried efforts to mute the movement).

Part of the problem is BLM’s intentionally “leaderless” structure. The goal is to let all voices be heard, but the practice practically invites well-organized, stridently radical voices to take over its events. Go to enough “progressive” protests and you’ll recognize the same old provocateurs, with their neat offset-printed signs and posters.

Here in the city, BLM’s lack of structure has allowed these professional agitators to take over protests by acting like march marshals — leading chants calling for dead cops, carrying placards calling cops “Pigs, Murderers” and trying to provoke a police response with taunts and spittle.

We don’t think most BLMers want the police to stop patrolling minority neighborhoods. But we’ve heard this demand from some who’ve seized the mic at BLM events.

During a 2015 Bronx event calling for justice in the case of Ramarley Graham, one such foul-mouthed agitator was seen facing cameras and passing motorists holding a “F#*k the police” sign.

At the Eric Garner marches in Staten Island and Union Square, those same provocateurs seeded themselves among the marchers.

Happily, in Staten Island, NAACP marshals took away the offending signs and weeded out the agitators.

It’s time for BLM to learn from the history of the civil-rights movement — to emulate Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. and organize to give voice to the movement’s better angels.