Quote Originally Posted by pbmax View Post
I could be mistaken, but I think lethal force should be reviewed much more rigorously than routine police interactions. Which is not to say those routine actions shouldn't be reviewed. But the stakes involved are far higher when guns are drawn.

I reject the argument that this represents a blanket condemnation of all police. The second officer on the scene didn't lose his mind. But there are those who should not be on the force while armed. And this guy should not get a similar job with another department after this incident. His training might have been lax, his skills might be below par, or he may not deal with stressful situations well.

But it should not take a death to make the HR judgement that he is not fit to be an armed police officer.

Arguing the Kaepernick is being emotional or over the top is simply avoiding the main question by concentrating on who is reacting the right way. The right thing to do is to make sure this person, and others like him who cause deaths needlessly, do not work at this same position again. Then you update the training for all departments to prevent it (and weed people out) before more deaths occur.

It doesn't matter if he shot Castile, the Pope, my grandmother or my dog, he doesn't belong in uniform carrying a gun if this is how he handles himself. Did his training fail him? Maybe, but we will never know* because he will be brushed off the front page and the odds are that nothing will change.

*If anyone discovers a piece describing what might have gone into this from a training or personal perspective, post a link.
It seems to me you are confusing points. First is Kap: is his view legitimate or not? I argue it is not because it is a blanket treatment of cops as bad. This is not shocking; he is not alone in this view - saw very similar views just today in my liberal community arguing that police should not be called for altercations because they just shoot all blacks dead. That's what they do because they are racists. So is his reaction appropriate? Is this general reaction to police appropriate? Is Kap reacting in the right way? Well, considering people in the NFL want nothing to do with him suggests that he's reacting in an inflammatory way. Kap's reaction is the main issue, because as I said, police encounters happen by the hundreds of thousands and Kap is making like these highly charged and publicized cases that show police in a bad light are the norm, and are certainly due to the pervasive racism of police. A lot of people don't agree with him, even those who strongly believe there is a problem.

Second is whether the cop is a murderer or manslaughter. Possibly, but the jury didn't agree. More likely, as you point out, he's a poor police officer, who doesn't have a good sense of whether a situation is escalating to a confrontation with a 'suspect' or is just a situation with a guy who is high and impaired, has a gun, but is not a threat. The police force will determine that. I hope they have enough motivation to remove a bad officer over protecting 'one of their own.' If scrutiny could do anything it might make police more carful about techniques, training and evaluation. But again, there will be mistakes and difficult encounters even with highly trained and decent officers. The actual result of much of the recent scrutiny has been for police to withdraw from positive policing in communities, and in many cases, it's led to more crime.

If the press decides to continue their protocol of advancing the narrative that both incites and confirms anti-police bias, you'll continue to see the very rare cases endlessly running on video loops, so long as they can get the video. There are plenty of resources to find out the exact level of police bias but I suspect our essentially leftwing media and entertainment industries will continue to sell the story of rampant institutional police hatred of, bigotry towards, and indiscriminate slaughter of racial minorities. It looks like for now, the NFL and fans aren't buying this extreme view. If Kap wants a job, he's going to have to moderate his tone or vastly improve his game to become indispensable.