BLUF: know what you're talking about before passing judgement from your comfortable lair.
It's called assessment and situational awareness. Police are taught and practice it regularly...
Temper; Intent; Means. - Temper: is the person visibly demonstrating anger, fear, angst, aggression?
- Intent: is the person demonstrating purposeful aggression toward a specific target?
- Means: is the person capable of causing harm Armed? bigger/stronger than target? Driving a weapon? Reasonable access?
..... and thats how it works. People can call it racism if they'd like.... and apparently they do. When a culture is steeped in drugs, violence, and general aggression toward police and/or authority, they're going to be scrutinized more. Period. And, fairly.
Is it race based? No it's not. It's culture based. The distinction is huge and its highly overlooked, and I would suggest purposely.
All three items above (temper/intent/means) have to be assessed before escalation of force even begins....
Escalation of force: - Physical presence.
- Verbal warning.
- Show of force.
- Non lethal force.
- Force which is known or should reasonably be known to constitute danger to life and/or cause serious bodily injury.
Force is matched+1... example: of a guy bucks up to police, the police have justification to deploy non lethal force.
Force is never de-escalated. Once a person has deployed non-lethal force, they can't pocket that force and go back to show of force.... once it's out it stays out until the circumstance is defused or the aggressor is safely detained.
Now... i offer this as just a fleeting taste of training and training that is exercised by police regularly. It isn't them who need training- its the public, and especially certain cultures within that public. I mean, if a rocket crashes, are you going to listen to the engineer about the cause? A person steeped in knowledge and experience? Or, does the account offered by Billy Bob, who happens to be both high and drunk, fulfill your curiosity? When we dismiss the account of police, and take the assailant's word, that is exactly what we're doing.
Sure there are bad cops. They are few, though. There are more who shouldn't be police as they don't have the personality (read: emotional control) to be such. Those are where likely 80-90% of the problems with police start... the other 10-20% is the freakin' reporting/accounting of incidents from people like Billy Bob. .....And then the emotional response by people who have no control over their emotions.
there is a shit ton more to being a cop than some jerkwad arm chair quarterback three hours after the game with opportunity to reflect on circumstances and who has no understanding of the position of police. Its damn easy to blame "racism"... and its gotta be "systemic", right?
What is proven systemic? Pop culture, (read: music, video, movies) promoting violence and violence toward police, and idiots "life imitating art" (including the police here) living out their expectations of what life should be like. I mean, name ONE movie off the top of your head set in 1750+ that DIDN'T have a gun in it or someone getting whacked on?