Yep.
The leeway our law enforcement officers get in a country that supposedly as advanced as ours is disappointingly regressive. I think we can see from our current political situation, though, that we weren't nearly where we pretended to be as a society. I just watched the Mehdi Hasan debate on Jubilee and the stuff that was said made my head spin.
But, yeah, we don't vet our cops enough, we don't train them enough, we over-arm them, and then we given them qualified immunity. People were surprised yesterday when one of the Briona Taylor cops got three years in prison. They fired 10 shots into an apartment and hit no one, so the recommendation was that they serve no jail time despite being guilty. The federal judge disagreed, saying it was a miracle they didn't hit anyone. Of course, Breonna Taylor's still dead, and the person that accidentally shot her isn't going to serve a day for that.
I was talking to a law enforcement officer Monday. They're young and very well-intentioned. I see them like I used to see a lot of young social worker friends. They're getting burnt out of their job at 25. This is someone that wants to do it well, but they see things that are making them disillusioned. They aren't getting the help they need. They have a society that's contributing to everyone being angry at each other, and they're seeing colleagues that take short cuts or don't care about whether they hurt people or not and it's making it harder for them to do their jobs.
We need to vet and train these people better and, if they're going to be handed lethal force, there needs to be a higher standard of safety and accountability. Even if it's only 5-10%, we have too many people in this line of work that are there to take out their anger on strangers.