> People in a state of confusion or crisis sometimes don't have the option of being cooperative with the police.
I hear your point, and I'm all for mercy, patience, trying to understand and help people in crisis, etc. But at the same time, choices have consequences, and you can't escape that. This isn't victim blaming, it's just a law of nature. It is a tragedy if someone gets into such a state of confusion/rage/whatever that they, say, try to stab someone to death, but it's also not wrong for someone to step in and protect the intended victim. And if the act of saving the innocent harms the attacker, that's awful, but the fact remains that the attacker would not have come to harm if not for their earlier choices.
> [0] https://www.pnas.org/content/116/34/16793
I haven't had time to look at this study in depth, but a cursory glance suggests they are almost completely ignoring what is probably the most important factor, and that is the rate of violent crime (the second most influential data point would probably be socioeconomic level).
They show a correlation between race and death at the hands of police, which is indisputable. A causal relationship is TBD, though they brush up against it by stating, "This pattern is similar to the distribution of violent crime".