[molson]

I work very closely with police officers in a red, gun-happy law-and-order state and that officer's behavior, even without the shooting, would not have gone over well with his supervisors or the AG's office.

I think the job of police officer is generally way, way more difficult than people generally assume, and that the available training, especially in the poorer states, is much more sparse than people assume. But I think the thing people would really be surprised by, is that 99% of the mistakes I see from inexperienced officers are based around not being forceful enough, taking too long to make decisions, trying too hard to be polite, etc. It's the rare inexperienced officer that compensates for his insecurities by being more verbally or physically abusive. (there's probably a few more than that that develop those traits with experience, in an law enforcement environment that tolerates it). It just makes the job more difficult. And obviously that 1% stands out and and can become national news when they fuck up, and a bad culture that tolerates that kind of thing can produce more fuckups. And the reality is, with the limiting training available, it's impossible to completely weed out ALL of the officers like this. Especially when applications are down across the board. It's difficult to know how officers will react in tense moments, and it's even more difficult to fire them when you see a problem. But the problem on that end is generally not with the law enforcement supervisors, who from my experiences, want to fire quickly and often, but from the lawyers who, somewhat justifiably, are concerned about paper trails and liability and legal battles over terminations.