The timing simply couldn't have been worse.On July 8, the morning after five police officers were shot dead in Dallas, Texas, victims of a sniper targeting law enforcement, the St. Louis Post-Dispatch ran a syndicated cartoon in which a police officer asks a pharmacist for something to help his "itchy trigger finger."
The cartoon, by Massachusetts-based artist Dave Granlund, was in response to high-profile shootings in Baton Rouge, Louisiana, and St. Paul, Minnesota, earlier in the week. Those shootings — which left two black men dead — had left the nation reeling.
But then on Thursday night, the narrative abruptly shifted.…