They don't care if officers killed in the line of duty, as apparently we have an unlimited numbers of people who would love to risk their lives as a LEO so that other's can remain safe.
Is the system foolproof? No. Do accidents and unjustified firings happen? Yes. Are the measures some people want to take practical or logical? No. People want to throw the baby out with the bathwater. These sorts of events used to happen just as frequently - but didn't have Twitter and social media backlash behind every occurrence. With social media coverage these events seem far more common than they used to be, which leads to more outrage against them. I can understand and to some extent sympathize with where people are coming from - but we need a more practical solution than "try to hit an extremity and pray you don't hit an artery". Arm/thigh shots can be fatal from bleed-out. Life isn't the Hollywood movie that some people think it is.
They are asking officers to have 100% accuracy (take an arm/leg shot on a moving target from a distance? Good fucking luck!) and don't recognize that "target with a knife" is a deadly threat from a surprisingly close distance, whether you have a gun or not [0].
[0] Tueller Drill, as seen on Mythbusters: https://youtu.be/ckz7EmDxhtU?t=263
You get a constant drum beat of news articles showing the cops killing people who were unarmed, and public resistance grows, which for most people means nothing, as they aren't about to become criminals. Years of police abuses leads to a lot of people not caring if officers live or die, though-- where we are right now. This is a good thing, because everyone is on the same page: violent police are unliked.
The colder the community gets to police, the faster they will change their tune. Ferguson was a turning point, with many police departments realizing that violence begets violence, and military occupation of neighborhoods as a policy begets violent opposition. Since Ferguson we've seen a lot of police departments start to walk back violence as a policy, and maybe in 10 years we'll be back to community policing.
People see the European policing model (police not murdering tons of people or constantly beating/tasing them, having polite and helpful cops who are members of the community) and are getting jealous and angry. This too is a good thing.
Anything that gets views will be a constant drum beat in the media. Media coverage is a bad indicator of reality. I would prefer these numbers stay lower [0]. But these numbers never get brought up by the media. They happen frequently enough that articles could be drummed out once a week, I wonder why they aren't?
>I don't think that people complaining about excessive use of force hurt the point of view that the US is a police state.
I'm arguing that the people who bring up foolish points as solutions are more harmful than helpful. I for one don't like reading articles like this one [1]. This isn't about being a police state - this is about people not knowing how to deescalate things. "Taking arm/leg shots" is not deescalation. Not shooting a violent and armed suspect is not deescalation. More or less asking officers to risk death is not deescalation. Yes - the US is increasingly becoming a police state. No, asking officers to risk death instead of shooting is not going to solve it.
I agree about being members of the community. Public outreach and police interacting with the community in friendly ways goes a long way. We need more of this [2] [3] [4] [5]. It builds trust, it builds a sense of community, and that's something sorely lacking in many places of the US.
[0] http://imgur.com/vu7kh0L.jpg
[1] http://www.cnn.com/2015/08/13/us/alabama-birmingham-police-d...
[2] http://imgur.com/gallery/fgGLfPv
[3] http://imgur.com/gallery/6tpEqly
1: http://www.odmp.org/search/year 2: http://killedbypolice.net/
Though I will ask that you do not make the dangerous assumption that "unarmed = not dangerous" or that being found to be unarmed post-facto made them not dangerous to begin with.
If someone threatens to have a gun and threatens to shoot but is actually unarmed at a distance of 30' and they reach behind them - what do you do? Waiting for visual confirmation of a weapon could leave you dead. The potential of them not bluffing is there.
That scenario is a little contrived but there are many variations and they don't involve the suspect having a weapon or bluffing to have a weapon. What if they don't say anything at all but reach behind them? Does that change the situation?
>And it also seems odd to me that anyone would be surprised that officers might be injured
I'm not surprised at all, it is expected to have risk after all. I am surprised that people are asking officers to take additional and unnecessary risks.
- http://twitter.com/chiefslmpd/status/501808398531563522