As the rhetorical battle over Israel and Palestine wages, some progressives find ourselves caught in the middle.

The topic of “toxic masculinity” comes up more in conversations about #MeToo than about Black Lives Matter, understandably so. But cop machismo is an important way of understanding police violence against people of color. It helps explain why Derek Chauvin pressed his knee against George Floyd’s neck — continuing for two minutes after Floyd’s pulse stopped — and why three other officers chose to keep the crowd at bay rather than save Floyd’s life.

The numbers tell the sad story.

As a child in the early 1980s, LeRonne Armstrong spent much of the summer watching cartoons at his grandma’s apartment in West Oakland’s Acorn Projects. The public housing development would later become notorious as the site where Black Panther co-founder Huey Newton was killed in 1989, but for Armstrong’s mother, it was where she sent her three children for safekeeping as crack began menacing the city and violent crime was on the rise.

The months-long, multiracial protests against police violence and for racial equality are a demand for change, and states such as Colorado are listening. The Legislature is at risk of not heeding the call. The proposed police reform bill for the current special session does not do half of what Colorado did. If Nevada is serious about meaningful change, our Legislature must deliver police reform at least as strong as Colorado’s.

Our years of studying constitutional civil rights have taught us that police policies and even criminal statutes are not enough to overcome the “blue wall of silence” among officers. What’s needed are state laws that create an affirmative duty for bystander cops to intervene to prevent use of excessive force or other civil rights deprivations, and that allow civil suits against cops who don’t.

We are saddened and frightened by the shootings in Las Vegas during recent protests. A Metro police officer was shot, and, in a separate incident, police killed another person believed to be an armed protester. We hope for the survival of the officer and grieve the loss of the civilian’s life. These shootings are not representative of the community-wide protests and vigils, but they arise in a city that has long been simmering with tension between police and local residents.

Congress seems uniquely united that something needs to be done about policing throughout the country.