Ninety-nine point nine percent of police officers are actually sane (gasp!) and do not want any “excuse” to engage in excessive force.  Sure, some (far and few between, I’ll add) officers do want a chance to work out some bully-aggression, but the vast majority start out with the desire to make this a better place, to improve society.

Most people do not realize just how many whacked out folks are in the world, but cops are exposed to situations that “civilians” will never–hopefully–find themselves in.

I can’t imagine the horrors that cops may see, or just how unpleasant some of the people they run into are to not only the cops, but everyday people.  Whether the challenges from the job arise from a series of unfortunate circumstances, or from a cold blooded psychopathic killer, every terrible “crime scene” must take a piece of humanity from them.

To witness what horrors humanity can perpetuate on itself…that takes a kind of strength that most of humankind doesn’t possess.  It can turn people hard.

(It’s also one of the careers with the highest rate of alcoholism.  Medical professions, like doctors, are up there too.)

What brings this up?  A couple of officers have been accused of shooting and killing a mentally ill person in L.A, California, after repeated requests (and tasering) to surrender.

I may get crap for saying this, but mentally ill people can be very dangerous–most of all, to themselves. It all depends on what the person has been diagnosed with, of couse. Relatives of the shooting victim have said that he’d never hurt them–but I tend to disagree.

I’d say they didn’t know that for sure, since they called the cops to get some help for him.  Look, police resort to guns as a last resort; they do not take pleasure in shooting people. Really.

That said, I don’t think that the “law” is infallible.  I think that all deaths like this should be investigated by a neutral (by that I mean neither supported by the police or the police watch dog groups) agency.

But what really gets me is that the family of the deceased is suing the city for “wrongful” death.  What do they want? Not badges, or the people that shot their loved one in prison.  No. They want MONEY.