We want our leaders to step up, to look at the facts, to say, “This is not right.”

That is why people in a Maryland courtroom began clapping. Because it finally happened.

In Prince George’s County, ­24 hours after a handcuffed man was shot and killed in police custody this week, a police chief called it like it was and charged the officer with murder. In record time.

“I am unable to come to our community this evening and provide you with a reasonable explanation for the events that occurred last night,” Prince George’s County Police Chief Hank Stawinski told reporters Tuesday. “I concluded that what happened last night is a crime.”

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And when a judge denied bail for Cpl. Michael A. Owen Jr., 31, on Wednesday, the courtroom filled with an unconventional round of applause.

Owen was arrested a day after he shot and killed William Green, a 43-year-old father of two from Southeast Washington.

Green had been in a traffic accident on the way home from a restaurant when the officer arrived on the scene to investigate. He handcuffed Green and put him in the front seat of his police car.

This is where the story gets horribly familiar.

Owen said Green struggled and that he was high on PCP.

The chief said it straight. There was no PCP, and there was no sign of a struggle. Only seven bullets that left a police weapon and a dead man.

This is what people wanted after the death of Philando Castile, the 32-year-old cafeteria worker whose killing by Minnesota police officer Jeronimo Yanez was live-streamed on Facebook four years ago.

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Despite the graphic, searing video of the shooting, it took police four months filled with protests and unrest to charge Yanez, who was eventually acquitted.

This is what people wanted in 2014, when Chicago officer Jason Van Dyke fired 16 shots into ­17-year-old Laquan McDonald, killing him. Later, the city’s inspector general found that police officers firmed up that blue wall, lying and destroying evidence.

This is what people wanted after the death of Freddie Gray, when protesters filled the streets after the 25-year-old Baltimore man died in police custody.

Eventually, six officers were charged in Gray’s death. Three were acquitted, and the cases against three others were dropped in 2016.

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Baltimore State’s Attorney Marilyn Mosby said prosecuting officers is complicated and fraught, alleging some officers were uncooperative during the investigation. “This system is in need of reform when it comes to police accountability,” Mosby said in a statement at the spot where Gray was arrested.

Police work is dangerous and people are unpredictable. Most people understand that.

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This was not the first time that Owen, the Prince George’s police officer arrested this week, had fired his police weapon.

In 2009, after someone shot at Owen during an attempted robbery outside his home in the Greenbelt area, Owen, who was off duty, fired back, police said. The robber fled.

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Two years later, he fatally shot 35-year-old Rodney Deron Edwards after he had pulled over in his unmarked van to help a man lying in the grass. Owen told investigators that Edwards had pulled a gun on him, and a loaded revolver was found at the scene.

Prosecutors said they will now reexamine that case.

Even with two incidents behind him, Owen wasn’t wearing a body camera when he fatally shot someone for the second time. There are only ­80 body cameras in a department of 1,500.

Stawinski and Prince George’s County Executive Angela D. Alsobrooks (D) said they would fund more body cameras in the future.

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That’s worthy of applause, even if it should have happened long ago.

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In every department and in every profession, there are bad apples.

Their numbers are small compared with the hundreds of thousands of officers who do so much good in America every day.

As Stawinski announced the charges against his own officer, he said it was one of the hardest days of his career.

It must have been.

But he made a huge statement to the people of Prince George’s County and the rest of the country on that tough day.

Because staying silent about the bad actors with badges reeks of complicity and consent. And that kind of silence taints every officer.