The death of a police officer is never something to be celebrated, let alone as retribution for a totally unrelated crime. Putting a target on the back of all police officers because of the poor judgement of some members of the force is no better than making unfair and unreasonable assumptions about an entire group people because of the color of their skin. Black lives matter, but so do the lives of police officers.

Those who are celebrating the shooting of the New York City cops as a win for #BlackLivesMatter are missing the point of the movement for police reform entirely. The goal of the protests isn’t to eliminate the police force, or to exact bloody vengeance from every police officer who walks the streets. It’s to reform an inherently broken system that’s plagued by institutionalized racism, inequality and the frequent use of unnecessary force by officers who aren’t held accountable by their superiors or the courts. It’s to ensure that we have more good cops than bad, not to make sure we have no cops at all.

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