Police gunfights are typically at much closer range than the military’s. Soldiers have more armor and are often already in fortified positions when fired upon. The situations aren’t exactly comparable.

Granted, combat troops probably have superior training to police.

I am not advocating for police to have a rule that disallows them to fire first. But police officers should be capable of acting cool under pressure and to use lethal force as a last resort not as a first tool to be used in any situation. I'd favor the rule that police should be filled with Army vets that have actually being on deployments and can keep their cool in an adversarial situations. There are plenty of footage of real firefights both involving police and Military in 80% of situation police looks like they are scared out of their mind and are acting purely out of being in uncontrollable fear which is a horrible situation.

These are SWAT teams. They often have military gear (http://reason.com/blog/2014/08/04/small-town-cops-get-armore...). If the problem is that they don’t have enough armor, let’s get them it.

This was across the street. Is that close? You can barely make out the victim in the body cam footage.