It’s a sad joke that society gives benefit of doubt to lawbreakers

We’re a lot like cops these days, inhibited in our actions and our speech by the likelihood both will be intentionally twisted by self-appointed activists aching to take offense.

While they should be getting fitted for bulletproof vests, cops may soon be ordered to wear camera equipment so that cop-bashers, unencumbered by a situation’s context, will find it easier to allege police brutality.

Bad cops? Of course there are bad cops. There are also bad coaches, bad nannies, bad priests. We’ve read about them all, yet somehow maintained faith that they were aberrations, not the norm.

A bad cop doesn’t mean all cops are bad.

Yet the job they’re asked to do on our behalf becomes potentially more lethal as society begins giving the benefit of the doubt to the lawbreaker, not the law enforcer.

These last few nights in Ferguson, Mo., have been nothing short of an outrage, personifying the adage that those who keep doing the same things, expecting different results, are insane.

Once again cops were seen ducking bottles and bullets, just as they did a year ago, while spokesmen for the community again insist the violence was perpetrated by outside agitators.

How did they know? Did they take attendance?

And if they were right, did they not expect those hooligans to return this year?

Whose idea was it to commemorate the first anniversary of Michael Brown’s death by recreating the chaos we witnessed last year?

To hear TV commentators repeatedly refer to Brown as “an unarmed black man shot by the police” is to understand how we are being manipulated.

There’s no mention of how he had just menaced an Asian shopkeeper, stealing his merchandise, and was now wrestling for control of an officer’s pistol when he was shot.

If Michael Brown had properly submitted to the officer’s authority, which we are all expected to do, he would be alive today.

That’s also true of Eric Garner, who died resisting arresting officers in New York.

It made no difference that it would have been his 32nd arrest; his family was awarded $5.9 million.

What will happen to this society if those charged with maintaining the law are resisted by those who are subsequently hailed and rewarded for defying it?

When Boston police officer John Moynihan was shot in the face five months ago in Roxbury, his assailant, an ex-con with a violent history, was immediately gunned down, prompting residents to gather and chant, “Black lives matter!”

What a joke. But if we don’t come to our senses soon, the joke’s on us.