Police officers should be held to high standards and punished where they fall short. But theirs is an immensely stressful, challenging, and emotionally draining job. And police officers do far more than most other Americans to keep their fellow citizens safe. They are far more important to the protection of black lives, for example, than the Black Lives Matter group.

But the difficulty of policing and the professionalism of many police officers is newly evidenced this week by the release of video showing a Feb. 10 police shooting in Greenville, S.C. Tragically, that shooting took the life of one Willie Robinson.