No easy answers for this. Do the best and brightest line up to be cops? Does a society w/o cops sound good or sound like Somalia?

It's human nature for cops to fear for their safety. It takes a mature person to have the calmness to assess the situation first. Maturity comes from experience. Experience comes from immaturity (to paraphrase the saying).

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Te futueo et caballum tuum

1986 300SDL, 362K
1984 300D, 138K

These type of things are bound to happen from time to time. Not much can be done practically to eliminate them.

As long as criminal activity exists in society there will be always be problems. My slight concern is with such light penalties criminal activity seems to be generally on the increase in areas that once had virtually none.

Factor in that police also think in some areas the courts are too laid back. The police feel there is no point in going through the motions. Same problem same person a few weeks later. Almost a constant merry go round of repetition.

Light penalties? We have one of the harshest injustice systems in the Western world. Death penalty? Check. Life without for 3 strikes even if murder is not involved? Check. Abolition of parole in the Federal system? Check.

If you want to see a cause, look to the educational system and general lack of opportunity for certain segments of society.

Lastly: crime rates have actually DROPPED significantly in most parts of the US in the last 20-30 years, despite meedjuh hype about sensational crimes.

It's a sad situation and I empathize with the family of the victim. There is always a lesson to be learned and those with the eyes to see and ears to hear will always learn from it.

So it appears we must weather the "Rookie cop" period of time until they graduate to "experienced cop", whenever that is. Kinda like Microsoft using Microsoft customers as "software testers" to ferret out the bugs in their software.