Is an unsettling phase in our national saga finally nearing its end?

Four times in three years, three white police officers (and one Hispanic watch captain, rebranded as ‘white’ by the Paper of Record) were accused of tracking down and killing black men on purpose, a recurring theme of an epidemic of violence, recalling the worst of Jim Crow. But it turned out that the four cases were all very different, with the assumed role of race in each instance ranging from low or nonexistent to shockingly high.