The next you want to think that a police officer may have been too on edge, consider this
https://www.liveleak.com/view?i=cb7_1502405948
http://thefreethoughtproject.com/cop-top-10-dangerous-jobs-c...
If a garbage man shoots someone, he gets a criminal trial, same as everyone else. If it's a defensible shooting, he'll be exonerated.
What is the point of society paying for a police program, if not to be better trained and better equipped personnel to handle these kinds of dangers?
Equip police with recording equipment to maximize their ability to justify and defend their actions, and then remove all special provisions that allows them to kill someone and not stand a full criminal trial.
> The way it works now, civilians often feel like the ones responsible for keeping violence at bay. In May, an African-American journalist named Tonya Jameson was changing the license plates on the used S.U.V. she had recently bought when an off-duty officer accused her of stealing the car — and pointed his gun at her. Ms. Jameson had proof of ownership in a bag that sat on the ground nearby, but she dared not move a muscle.
> Ms. Jameson told me that the words “black people can die like this,” kept running through her head. “That was my mantra. I knew I had to be careful not to freak him out. If he killed me, no one would know what really happened.”
> She spoke in a soothing voice, explaining to the police officer that if he looked in the bag, he would find the bill of sale. Instead he kept his gun trained on her and called in reinforcements.
When someone is "on the edge" like that, in a situation like that, I'll consider therapy in prison for them, but that's about it.
It's fine for policy, but that's not how we think of risk.
I think most police officers (those from sane departments) realize that they are unlikely to be victims of situations like the one depicted here. And police officers who are on edge are that way because of poor training, not because of any actual risk from their career choice.