After two decades of New York’s forced engagement with radical Islamists, two opposing falsehoods face each other: the myth of the lone gunman and the toxic lie that they are all gunmen. At the fulcrum, where it is critical to find and strike a balance, is the Police Department. It cannot risk the distortions of more fictions, of deliberate dishonesty or honest confusion. The police have to make it their business to get it right and to do it in the sunshine so that the whole world knows.