Quote:Always? No, I disagree.

 

If it permits, I absolute agree with you. If it's in the middle of a fight / gun battle / etc., then there isn't time to complete the pyramid on use-of-force. It seems as though people are talking about a bunch of different things at once, so it's difficult to keep up with your exact example.

 

Sometimes, "innocent" people die because they did something that led any reasonable person to fear for their lives. It's easy to Monday-morning quarterback everything they do, and it's difficult to accept that the person without a gun created the mess to begin with. 

 

We forget that the cops can be "innocents" too.

 

I'm speaking more the proliferation of heavy weapons and tactics that inflame what could otherwise be routine police duties. If Brown was really assaulting this officer in Ferguson then the officer acted righteously in self-defense. In the link I posted two cops no knocked the wrong place and killed an old man that they weren't looking for. That, unfortunately, has been epidemic with that type of warrant for at least the last decade, which means there's something wrong with that system that we aren't addressing. I'm not opposed to the correct equipment for the right job, I'm very concerned that officers are working beyond the scope of law enforcement simply because of the access and routine use of the tools. As I said, in the War on Crime everyone who isn't Law Enforcement ends up looking like an enemy combatant.

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