"Please don't let hate infect your heart. This city MUST and WILL get better. I'm working on these streets so any protesters, officers, friends, family, whatever, if you see me and need a hug or want to say a prayer, I got you."

—Baton Rouge police Officer Montrell Jackson in a July 8 Facebook post after the fatal police shooting of an African-American man. Jackson, also African-American, was one of three officers killed Sunday in Baton Rouge, La.

"Please don't let hate infect your heart. This city MUST and WILL get better. I'm working on these streets so any protesters, officers, friends, family, whatever, if you see me and need a hug or want to say a prayer, I got you."

Baton Rouge has reeled since July 5, when police responding to a call of a man brandishing a gun shot to death a black man outside a convenience store. Alton Sterling's three-hour funeral Friday brought some calm to Baton Rouge.

Sunday morning, though, a firefight erupts in the Louisiana capital. A police radio band crackles: "Shots fired, officer down! Shots fired, officer down!" Six officers down, actually. And, moments later, an officer pleads with dispatchers: "We need the BearCat!" — an armored personnel carrier of military lineage — to collect the wounded police.

Once again this summer, Americans struggled to parse fragments of information: A rifle-wielding shooter clad in black near Baton Rouge police headquarters. A robot searching for explosives. "Seventeen or so" people huddling for protection in a bathroom at Benny's Car Wash. Even a rush of officers to lock down Our Lady of the Lake Regional Medical Center as surgeons operate on the casualties. And a sobering radio request that cops on the scene look for still more victims: "I need eyes to see if we have any other officers down, so check around and see what else is around you."

See what else is around you — a fair synthesis of what many Americans are telling themselves.

Another day's bloodshed surely compounds grief and suspicion in a country buffeted more intensely than usual by issues of random, hate-inspired violence and intentionally inspired terrorism. Arguably the most sensible words of a mostly senseless Sunday came from Louisiana Gov. John Bel Edwards: "This is an unspeakable and unjustified attack on all of us at a time when we need unity and healing."

Repeat assassinations of police only add to the perception that this summer belongs to violence. Baton Rouge, like Dallas, raises tensions in a tense U.S. populace.

The shootings of 12 officers in Dallas on July 7 should have been instructive. During a peaceful march to protest killings of black men by police in other cities, a black sniper set out to kill white cops. Dallas police Chief David Brown, himself African-American, reacted to the mix of motives with blame-free wisdom: "This must stop — this divisiveness between our police and our citizens."

Not everyone listened. And here we are again.

REPRINTED FROM THE JACKSONVILLE DAILY NEW

Photo credit: Marcela