There is a lot of stuff going on. The cops are becoming more militarized and marginalized on the fringes of society. There are a lot of reasons for this. The Federal Government has pushed this agenda, first with the War on Drugs, and then the War on Terrorism. Joint Task Forces, Federal Grants for military equipment not necessary for most policing operations, and a broad based definition of "terrorism" (any crime can be defined as a terrorist act these days. DHS definitely wants a piece of the conventional law enforcement operations pie, too). Couple this with a general feeling of entitlement, legitimizing criminal justice studies as a legitimate academic discipline and the nepotism that prevails in the law enforcement community, and you have created and insular class of every bit as restrictive as the medieval guilds. Who do we have to blame? Mainly ourselves. If we look at the history of law enforcement, nobody wanted to be a cop, so it fell largely on immigrant populations at the turn of the last century, at least here in the east. Low status, low pay, crappy hours. Up until the 1970's the MSP actually lived in the barracks and a 70-80 hour work week was not uncommon. Public service unions came in and slowly but surely gained power. If many of you had lived just a generation ago, you would have been on the side of the cops against all those long haired hippies who spat on the flag, or remember the impact here in Boston of forced busing. Somewhere along the line, things changed and we have what we have. What used to be called "street justice" is now police brutality.
Now I don't know what happened in CT. I do know this, that in lots of training scenarios, as soon as the word "GUN" is shouted, police react, draw and fire. I'm thinking that might have happened here. Cop sees gun, yells "Gun" and then fires giving the victim no time to respond. It could be a training shortfall, I don't know and that doesn't make it a free pass, but ultimately people fight like they are trained and most police agencies don't spend a lot of time, effort or money training their officers. Most if not many cops view guns like cruisers, flashlights and pens, they are tools. In fact lots of cops don't like guns, and dread qualification day (qualification BTW should not be confused with training, although it frequently is). I'd like to say that many of you could shoot better under stress, but frankly after seeing a lot of you shoot at various NES Shoots over the past five years, I'd say many of you don't do any better than the cops. I know, you will say that's different, they are supposed to shoot better, well I can't refute that argument but reality is reality and we can deal with the way things are or the way they should be. We all know the way things should be.
Another distressing thing about this, is that a third party called from Florida. This again is an example of the do-gooder mentality that prevails in our society today, and the erroneous belief that the police are your friends. Just keep a low profile with the guns. You spouse, GF, BF parent or child can unwittingly be your own worst enemy. Wasn't there a guy in New Jersey who got jammed because his mother thought he might be injurious to himself, and he had just moved there with guns? She thought the police would help.
Here is a little mantra that you need to teach the closest people around you: "The police are not your friends"...plain and simple.
Now I don't know what is going to happen to that cop, whether he will be exonerated or indicted or whether he should be.
Another thing: being distraught after a shooting, even if it is a good shoot is not untypical. PTSD is a natural reaction in many people. Some of it is due to upbringing and values and part of it is do to the inherent personality types we all have. Somebody like the late Chris Kyle could shoot 100 people and not be too affected by it, but he is a warrior, and the simple truth, most of us are not. For a long time, I have divided the world into warriors and farmers. Warriors are natural fighters, farmers are the people who do the functions of society like business and agriculture and so forth. They will fight if cornered, maybe, if their interests are threatened just like any other primate, but it doesn't come naturally to them and they will either become less effective as they continue to engage in combat (it's no accident that most of the US Divisions that landed at DDay had no combat experience, that was intentional. The Army and later S.L.A. Marshal reckoned that the average effectiveness of an infantry soldier was about 4 months before a sense of self-preservation kicked in) Now I know that you are going to say that the cops aren't soldiers and you would be right, except armed conflict is armed conflict and shooting somebody is shooting somebody.
I know that not everyone will agree and some will say, oh he is pro-police. I will say no, I am not pro-police nor am I anti-police. I don't like what we are evolving into in this country, but the whole idea of a de facto militarized national police force is just one of many topics in a very troubled society, it may be at work in this case, or may be related to training, or it may be that the victim really tried to pull something off. Everyone wants a rush to judgement on this. Let's see what comes of it. I would like to hear more of the GF's account of the incident. I'm sure that she will have her bias, but she will also be able to give a perspective that may not be quite the same as the "official" version. Also too, she is the one who called her friend. On the cop side of the house, a domestic violence call is the most dangerous and the police are more edgy generally when responding to this type of call than towards other responses, the reason is simple: more police are killed or injured responding to these types of calls than other types of responses. Adrenalin is flowing and all that flight or flight stuff is starting to kick in, in many cases. If the victim was intoxicated, another bad thing, because you can never reason with a drunk...period.
