Rage in the streets over the killing of George Floyd by a Minneapolis police officer has exploded across the country, and leaders at all levels must rise to the occasion and speak to it.

The first priority is to stop the violence and destruction in our cities. No crisis is made better through looting and harming the innocent. In Fort Worth, protests have mostly been peaceful, a testament to both those taking to the streets and the police and city leaders trying to balance the First Amendment and public safety.

But elsewhere, the message of urgency to stop police persecution of African Americans has been lost amid needless window-smashing and fire-setting. Gov. Greg Abbott has taken several steps to boost police presence in Texas cities. In Dallas, Police Chief U. Renee Hall imposed a curfew and was blunt about the demonstrations there.

“This is no longer peaceful protesting,” she said Sunday.

Let’s not forget, too, that the U.S. is still trying to contain the coronavirus pandemic that has caused so much suffering for months on end. Reducing crowds is in the public-health interest, too.

Once that’s done, state and local leaders must focus aggressively on the problem of police violence against African Americans. And they must prevent distractions from robbing all of us of that focus.

On the left and right, activists want to assign blame for the riots to socialists or white supremacists. Prosecute those who organized or participated, but don’t go down the rabbit hole of the usual divide.

Other, more well-meaning voices argue that without widespread social reform to tackle economic, educational and housing discrimination, the problem can’t be truly addressed. All of those are real problems that deserve real solutions.

But if we try to fix everything, we’ll fix nothing. Don’t let this moment of opportunity to correct police violence slip away.

So far, several of our leaders have said encouraging things. Abbott called Floyd’s death a “tragedy,” telling Houston TV station KPRC that “clearly what happened in this instance did not follow protocol, was wrong. This man should still be alive today.”

Fort Worth Mayor Betsy Price said she is “committed to continuing the work we have started to root out racism, inequities and disparities at a systemic and policy level.”

Those are helpful sentiments, but leaders at all levels must commit to real action and follow up to make sure it takes hold.

Police departments must review hiring, training and recruiting and find ways to weed out potential problems. One of the great frustrations of these crimes is that they reflect upon the vast majority of officers who harm no one and want to truly serve their communities. Let’s help by ensuring the best possible force around them.

States and cities must also address the difficulty of disciplining and prosecuting officers who commit violence. This means taking on police unions, which can be politically powerful, and prosecutors who are reluctant to try officers because it’s tough to persuade a jury to convict. National policymakers have a role to play here, too, as the doctrine of “qualified immunity” makes it tough to hold officers and departments accountable in civil-rights lawsuits.

None of this will be easy. The Floyd killing, the officer’s knee on the man’s neck for eight minutes as he begged for his life, is so egregious that almost no one has risen to defend it. But many police interactions are a judgment call.

In Fort Worth, the police shooting that killed Atatiana Jefferson last year has given us a head start on these complexities. The city has hired a police monitor, and an expert review of the department’s procedures is underway.

And in a few weeks, voters have a rare opportunity to weigh in directly on police operations. The city is asking voters to extend for a decade the Crime Control and Prevention District, which provides a half-cent sales tax to fund police equipment and programs. While that question involves much broader issues than police brutality, Fort Worth residents may want to consider whether to send a message about whether change is happening fast enough and thoroughly enough.

Tarrant County Sheriff Bill Waybourn, a longtime chief of a small police department, could be an important voice on these issues, too, given his growing profile among Republicans nationally. In Arlington, where the city is searching for a new police chief, finding someone with good ideas of how to address relations with minority communities should be a high priority.

In many ways, America feels broken right now. We have three national emergencies layered upon one another: the pandemic, a cratered economy and violence in our cities. And it feels like our national leaders are paralyzed or even egging some of it on for political purposes.

George Floyd’s funeral will be in his native Houston, a moment of focus on Texas that gives us a chance to rise up and lead. It diminishes all of us that so many of our fellow Americans and Texans must fear any interaction with the police. Let’s aggressively dive into the work that must be done so that is no longer the case.