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But don't hold your breath waiting for apologies from those who would rather silence messengers like Black Lives Matters instead of dealing constructively with their concerns.

Instead, may I suggest a move toward common sense: Can we Americans allow ourselves to hold bad cops accountable without losing our respect for the heroic work that most police officers do?

That thought came to mind as I talked after Lake County's disclosures about their GI Joe with a police officer who has brought the world of police, politicians, the law and African-Americans together.

Chris Taliaferro, 49, is a black Chicago police sergeant and divorce lawyer who, after 20 years on the force, took a leave of absence to run for alderman of the city's 29th Ward earlier this year -- and won!

The alleged "war on cops" took on a Chicago flavor recently as Mayor Rahm Emanuel and FBI Director James Comey alleged that police might be "going fetal," in Emanuel's colorful lingo, instead of aggressively pursuing criminals and maybe getting caught in career-damaging cellphone video.

In my experience, that notion is an insult to police. But that's easy for me as a non-police officer to say. I was reassured to hear Taliaferro say the same thing.

"We have a record number of guns confiscated in the city and a higher arrest rate," he said. "Those are indicators already that our officers are not going into a fetal position. Of course, we are in the age of cell phones and social media, which I believe does have some effect. But officers aren't helpless."

Quite the contrary, Taliaferro said, after working in internal affairs for more than nine years he sees an advantage to having a video account of what happened in questionable situations. "Truth can be told by way of video," he said.

Nor does he oppose stop-and-frisk efforts which Chicago's police are under pressure to ease up, as long as police are required to report their reasons for every search. Stops much be justified with a better reason than, say, being young, male and black.

Despite some who paint black communities as less law-abiding, voters in Taliaferro's mostly black ward weren't opposed to putting a cop in their aldermanic seat. There's no need to turn a war on crime into a war on the cops or a war on human rights.

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(E-mail Clarence Page at cpage@tribune.com.)

(c) 2015 CLARENCE PAGE DISTRIBUTED BY TRIBUNE MEDIA SERVICES, INC.