The authoritarian left actively tries to make our country less safe. For example, they continuously try to demonize our country’s law enforcement. Because of this, they regularly ignore all the good things that officers do.

Earlier this week, local police officers gave a 5-year-old boy, whose uncle is a local officer, an incredible gift for his birthday. While the boy was sitting in his mini police car “on duty,” local police officers surprised him with a small parade. The heartwarming gesture was captured on video and posted to Facebook, where it quickly went viral.

The video, posted by Tammy Parker Linaburg, starts off by showing Greyson Boggs, a 5-year-old boy, sitting in a miniature police car attentively watching the empty road. The caption to the video explains that “[he] thinks he is a real deputy because his Uncle Try Linaburg is a Pendleton County Deputy in West Virginia.” As a result, he regularly dresses up in a police uniform and sits “on duty” to keep an eye on things.

In order to show him how much they appreciate his support and enthusiasm, the local police force decided to surprise him with a parade for his 5th birthday. They took several police cars and drove by his house with flashing red and blue lights and an occasional siren while he sat outside. The boy in the video appears noticeably amazed as police officers stop in front of his house to say hello.

Stories like this show the side of police that many on the left refuse to acknowledge. Liberals insist that our police officers are racist and evil. They claim that our country’s law enforcement officials systematically target minorities and offer flawed statistics to prove their point. For example, many argue that since black suspects make up 25% of those killed by police, but only 12% of the population, police are prejudiced against blacks.

Clearly, this is absolutely absurd and definitely does not prove that police are racist. This is because statistics like the one mentioned above don’t control for extremely important variables, like the type of neighborhood being patrolled.

John Lott and Carlisle Moody, two researchers studying police shootings, pushed back against the notion that the police are racist and offered an alternative explanation for the disproportionate killings. According to them, the difference has more to do with how dangerous the neighborhood is. “Crime rates differ across neighborhoods,” they argued in a recently published study, adding, “black neighborhoods tend to experience higher crime rates. Therefore, race-neutral police randomly assigned to neighborhoods will encounter more criminal activities in black neighborhoods. As such, they can be expected to employ lethal force against a higher proportion of black suspects.”

This means that places with high rates of criminal activity are expected to have high rates of lethal force used against suspects, regardless of their skin color. It just so happens that the places with the most criminal activity also happen to be areas with large black populations. This isn’t because blacks are inherently more dangerous. It’s because Democrats condemn them to a life of crime by implementing policies, like welfare programs, that make it extremely difficult for them to break the cycle of poverty.

Promoting the lie that police officers are racist has serious consequences. People believe the lies that groups like Black Lives Matter spread and take action. For example, last year, 5 police officers were shot and killed by Micah Johnson, a black, racist Army veteran, during a peaceful protest in Dallas.

Apparently, he murdered them simply because they were white police officers who he assumed were evil racists. “The suspect said he was upset about Black Lives Matter,” explained Dallas Police Chief David Brown at the time, adding, “he said he was upset about the recent police shootings. The suspect said he was upset at white people.”

The authoritarian left must be held responsible for the lies they spread. They are literally getting others killed. Conservatives need to push back against this narrative by highlighting all the good our officers do. Hopefully, doing so will help keep our officers safe.