It’s starting to become a habit. Black man. White cops. Mix with a flurry of bullets. Put them together and you get protests that turn into riots that damage property and devastate cities.

It happened again Sunday as Jacob Blake was shot seven times in Kenosha, Wisconsin, by the police. The shooting took place around 5 p.m., and by the end of the night, Wisconsin Gov. Tony Evers had issued a statement on the incident.

Now he’s calling the state legislature into session to take action on a number of bills addressing police activities, including the requirement of annual training on de-escalation techniques for police officers, prohibiting the use of chokeholds like the one that killed George Floyd, and prohibiting no-knock search warrants like the one that got Breonna Taylor killed.

On the surface, improving the police and how they work appears to be a noble cause. However, if you want to convince police departments you have their best interest at heart, you probably shouldn’t paint them with the broad brush of a brutal killer.

In his statement Sunday night, Evers said: “While we do not have all of the details yet, what we know for certain is that he is not the first Black man or person to have been shot or injured or mercilessly killed at the hands of individuals in law enforcement in our state or our country.”

So, without knowing all of the details, Evers declared the police officer as the bad guy. For a bureaucrat that has police officers protecting him when he’s outside the Capitol, he’s incredibly quick to judge the officer guilty. It would have been smarter for Evers to denounce the incident without claiming he doesn’t know “all of the details.”

It’s blanket statements like this that have allowed discrimination to flourish in this country. The reality is that not all Black people are guilty, nor are they all innocent, and likewise, not all police officers are racists.

Change does need to happen, because there are officers that have crossed the line. However, the leaders of that change need to come with a dose of common sense. Making a statement without know all of the facts does not show common sense. It shows bias. Bias is a not-so-distant cousin of discrimination, which is a stone’s throw from racism. It doesn’t seem like a place where a Democratic governor would want to be, but here we are.

Evers should probably pay attention to fellow Democrat Tammy Baldwin. The U.S. senator representing Wisconsin issued this statement about what happened to Jacob Blake: “The video from Kenosha of a Black man being shot is terrifying to watch and we need a full and independent investigation by the Wisconsin Department of Justice to get all the facts about this police shooting. As we pray for Jacob Blake to live, let peaceful protests lead the way to the answers we seek, and justice.”

Common sense. It can still exist in people. Baldwin’s statement sought calm and a thorough investigation to find out the truth. She didn’t call the officer a merciless killer, and although she also admitted not having all of the facts, she called for a search for facts.

Evers would do well to follow Baldwin’s example. Shooting your mouth off and making rash statements that alienate all police officers will not win the hearts of people, especially when you’re trying to prevent incidents like this from happening again.

Hopefully, the governor will achieve the reforms that are needed to make this happen. In order to do that, though, Evers will need to either choose his words carefully or be silent. There are enough white-hot flames burning on this issue and countless others, and the last thing we need is for Evers to turn on the fan.