But the meat of Kaepernick’s cause actu­al­ly came two sen­tences later:

“There are bod­ies in the street and peo­ple get­ting paid leave and get­ting away with murder.”

Hold it right there:

“Getting away with murder.”

That is the story.

There is no need to inter­pret why Kaepernick is not stand­ing for the anthem — he has told us.

In tak­ing a baton hand­off from Carmelo Anthony and the incred­i­bly under­rat­ed WNBA protests, Kaepernick has used the most spe­cif­ic lan­guage on police account­abil­i­ty of any recent athlete.

Kaepernick is recen­ter­ing police account­abil­i­ty with crys­tal clarity.

“Accountability” is not the “mur­der” part, it’s the “get­ting away with” part.

Why is the word “account­abil­i­ty” so hard for Kaeper-crit­ics to understand?

Because crit­i­ciz­ing Kaepernick is depen­dent on not under­stand­ing it.

They can’t crit­i­cize lack of police account­abil­i­ty, so they change the subject.

So they bring up crime.

But civil­ians go to prison in droves while police who mur­der almost nev­er do.

So they bring up fall­en officers.

But the men who shot the offi­cers in Dallas and Baton Rouge were killed imme­di­ate­ly as cop killers often are. Finding a cop killer not dead or con­vict­ed is even rar­er than find­ing a killer cop arrest­ed at all.

Again, peo­ple aren’t just protest­ing police mur­der, they are protest­ing “get­ting away with” mur­der — the ulti­mate expres­sion on the non-val­ue of Black life in America.

And while a polit­i­cal con­ven­tion or pres­i­den­tial race pan­el won’t dare explain this super-sim­plis­tic point, Colin Kaepernick can.

So instead, they change the sub­ject once more to imag­i­nary mil­i­tary slights he nev­er stated.

Last night, Kaepernick clar­i­fied that too: “I have great respect for the men and women that have fought for this coun­try. I have fam­i­ly, I have friends that have gone and fought for this country.”

And then, Kaepernick explained the trag­ic hypocrisy:

“This coun­try isn’t hold­ing up their end of the bar­gain… men and women that have been in the mil­i­tary have come back and been treat­ed unjust­ly, and have been mur­dered by the coun­try they fought for, on our land. That’s not right.”

No. That’s not right. It’s criminal.

Walter Scott, killed by offi­cer Matthew Slager on video, was a US Veteran. So was India Kager, Kenneth Chamberlain and oth­ers. Scott was not only shot while run­ning away, but the orig­i­nal police report was fal­si­fied so Slager could “get away with murder.”

Slager, who is still await­ing tri­al, wasn’t just a “bad apple,” he was part of a police cov­er-up. Slager nev­er hon­ored Scott’s past mil­i­tary ser­vice. He mur­dered him.

A flag does not inher­ent­ly rep­re­sent sol­diers. That is a life­time of polit­i­cal brain­wash­ing talking.

Claiming Kaepernick’s act as an insult to sol­diers is as log­i­cal­ly twist­ed as claim­ing stand­ing up for the flag hon­ors Micah Johnson and Gavin Long — the two mil­i­tary vet­er­ans who killed police in Dallas and Baton Rouge.

Neither state­ment makes any damn sense.

And yet some peo­ple are actu­al­ly more offend­ed with Kaepernick protest­ing police get­ting away with mur­der than those “get­ting away with mur­der” itself?

Now THAT is offensive.

Why? Because what they’re real­ly say­ing is “White Feelings >Black Lives”

And this is what Kaepernick is real­ly try­ing to tell us (and by us, I real­ly mean white people).

While most sub­ject-chang­ing Kaeper-crit­ics avoid­ed his mes­sage for account­abil­i­ty, here is one rare excep­tion from a sports­writer who callsKaepernick a “f – king idiot”:

“First, who is get­ting away with mur­der? That’s a strong accu­sa­tion. Who in par­tic­u­lar has com­mit­ted mur­der in this coun­try and not been charged with it? If you’re going to make this state­ment then you need to give us par­tic­u­lars that moti­vate your deci­sion and your beliefs. I don’t want bland gen­er­al­i­ties, I want specifics here.”

There is a lot of denial, priv­i­lege and enti­tle­ment to unpack here.

First, Colin Kaepernick owes you absolute­ly noth­ing. He is not respon­si­ble for your edu­ca­tion — which is only a mere web-click away. There is prac­ti­cal­ly a cop-killing web video library that has emerged in the last two years, and scores of oth­er reports and data. Research them.

Second, after Alton Sterling was killed on a video last month, Kaepernick was actu­al­ly very spe­cif­ic. These were his remarks in an Instagram post:

“This is what lynch­ings look like in 2016! Another mur­der in the streets because the col­or of a man’s skin, at the hands of the peo­ple who they say will pro­tect us. When will they be held account­able? or did he fear for his life as he exe­cut­ed this man?”

There is video from three dif­fer­ent angles of Sterling being shot while restrained on the ground, yet the offi­cer has still not even been arrested.

If those videos are not enough, if you want to “wait for all the facts” over your own eye­balls, then there is noth­ing to discuss.

If we also need Kaepernick to hold our hands through videos of Sterling, Natasha McKenna or Eric Garner, then there is noth­ing to discuss.

Hell, if the pre­req­ui­site for con­vict­ing a killer cop is a video, then that’s mere­ly a license to mur­der with­out one.

And if you believe Walter Scott was mur­dered (a point David Duke would sure­ly con­cede), but still would have believed the con­spir­a­to­r­i­al lies on the orig­i­nal police report, your con­ces­sion is use­less, not justice.

No more subject-changing.

Let’s break down Kaepernick’s com­ments on Sterling, line by line:

“What lynch­ing looks like in 2016!”

Lynching was not just char­ac­ter­ized by rope, but by the abil­i­ty to avoid con­vic­tion in a court of law. Sunday was the 61^st anniver­sary of Emmett Till’s his­toric mur­der. The 14-year-old Till is not only rel­e­vant because of his bru­tal mur­der, but also because a jury acquit­ted his mur­der­ers the next month.

“Another mur­der in the streets because the col­or of a man’s skin, at the hands of the peo­ple who they say will pro­tect us.”

Kaepernick specif­i­cal­ly points out the high­er stan­dard police get sworn into as pub­lic ser­vants. While many whites are also trag­ic vic­tims of police vio­lence at low­er rates, there is a pat­tern of police behav­ior that val­ues white life and takes risks to save white life — even when white peo­ple are actu­al­ly point­ing gunsdirect­ly at police.

“When will they be held account­able? or did he fear for his life as he exe­cut­ed this man?”

Again, Kaepernick specif­i­cal­ly used the word “account­able” with Alton Sterling — a delib­er­ate word he spoke again mul­ti­ple times last night.

He is also ques­tion­ing the absurd “fear for life” law that allows either the mur­der­ous or racial­ly irra­tional “fears” of (often) white offi­cers as a legal loop­hole. Ex-Seattle Police Comissioner Norm Stamper agrees. Chapter 5 of his book “Breaking Rank” is titled: “Why White Cops Kill Black Men.”

Stamper writes: “White cops are afraid of black men… We say that offi­cers treat black men the same way they treat white men. But that’s a lie. In fact, the big­ger, the dark­er the black man the greater the fear.”

Did the cop who exe­cut­ed Alton Sterling do so out of inten­tion­al mur­der or from a deep afflic­tion of hyper-irra­tional racial fear ignit­ed by a sim­ple twitch? It is doubt­ful that Sterling’s heart­bro­ken son cares.

And nei­ther should we. The offi­cer must be held accountable.

Or in Colin’s words, we must stop him from “get­ting away with murder.”

And in this era of increased incar­cer­a­tion and state vio­lence against of Black women, that also goes for Rekia Boyd, Sandra Bland, Aiyana Jones, etc.

Kaepernick is not say­ing any­thing new. The num­bers are absolute­ly stag­ger­ing. The Daily News’ own Shaun King writes:

“When the offi­cers who killed Tamir Rice, Eric Garner, John Crawford, Mike Brown, or Natasha McKenna nev­er even go to tri­al for what they did, see­ing an offi­cer indict­ed and charged with manslaugh­ter or mur­der feels a lit­tle like fit­ting a camel through the eye of a nee­dle. Of the 1,200 peo­ple killed by American police in 2015, only sev­en cas­es result­ed in charges — a ridicu­lous­ly tiny num­ber… Not one sin­gle police offi­cer was con­vict­ed for an on-duty death in 2015.”

This is what an epi­dem­ic of “zero-account­abil­i­ty” looks like.

Do we need Kaepernick to crunch these num­bers for us too?

So far, the only num­bers Kaeper-crit­ics seem to care about is his salary. This was best sym­bol­ized in tweets like this from CBS sports jour­nal­ist Doug Gottlieb:

“$61m guar­an­teed… Very oppressed #ColinKaepernick”

Gottlieb failed to state just how many mil­lions an ath­lete must make to stop police from per­son­al­ly assault­ing them (see: James Blake or Thabo Sefolosha) or to stop cops all around the coun­try from “get­ting away with murder.”

Of course, Kaepernick was ref­er­enc­ing all “peo­ple of col­or.” Last night he kind­ly elab­o­rat­ed that he was speak­ing for peo­ple that “don’t have a voice” and plat­form to “affect change.”

Said Kaepernick: “I’m going to con­tin­ue to stand with the peo­ple that are being oppressed.”

Critics, take note: stand WITH.

Not sure if Colin can be any clearer.

But valu­ing Black lives has nev­er real­ly been about read­ing com­pre­hen­sion, and Colin knows this.

Which is why he is stand­ing up by sit­ting down.

If you don’t like the mes­sen­ger, then take it from a more respectable sports icon and mil­i­tary vet­er­an Jackie Robinson who wrote in his auto­bi­og­ra­phy short­ly before his death (h/​t @profloumoore & @edgeofsports):

“I can­not stand and sing the anthem, I can­not salute the flag. I know I am a black man in a white world in 1972 and 1947, at my birth in 1919, I know that I nev­er had it made.”

As long as we keep chang­ing the sub­ject from “get­ting away with mur­der,” Colin Kaepernick, and the oppressed peo­ple he stands with in 2016, do not have it made.

Send a Letter to the Editor Story orig­i­nat­ed here: http://www.nydailynews.com/sports/football/murder-4-words-kaeper-critics-won-tackle-article‑1.2769870