[Ned Doolittle]

I often find it weird, and I have no evidence to back this up just a hunch, that women police officers aren't the ones in these "shoot first ask questions later" scenarios. It tends to be male officers (again, I don't know the statistics in these cases it just seems to be that way). Point being while still horrible, a case could be made "oh, it was a female officer who probably felt she couldn't physically handle this guy that's why she had an itchy trigger finger. She got scared." But that doesn't seem to be the case. By and large it's male officers who are in these scenarios. In the case of Baton Rouge they had Alton pinned down. In what world are two male cops who have another man pinned down "in threat of mortal danger"? He's neutralized. In the Minnesota case you have one male cop against another male - does the male cop not have faith in his combat training and ability to use a night stick/mace effectively? Not saying cops needs to be ninja masters, but one vs one you would think the person with physical training, various crowd control weapons (not including his pistol) is a match for any one male. If not, either don't let that male cop join the force or pair him up with a partner.

I'm a big muscular guy, I have confidence in myself that I can handle most any "average" normal guy, give me combat training and a nightstick/mace and my confidence to handle most situations that aren't life or death increases. With physical training and crowd control weapons (night stick/mace) perhaps I can handle one biggish male rather than one average male one on one. My point is these cops, even with their supposed advantage over the average citizen, are still scared to do their job where they are going to the pistol too quickly. And they are so scared they aren't shooting to hurt/shooting to neutralize, they're shooting to kill.