Fun fact! In America, bartenders are more likely to die due to a violent incident at work than police are. Overall many trades are deadlier than policing, including fishing, forestry, and roofing.

So when we as a society decide it's acceptable for roofers to only fix the shingles they can reach from the ground and lumberjacks to only fell trees less than 15' tall, I'll give cops a pass for half-assing their jobs and treating their own personal safety as more important than that of the public they claim to serve and protect. Until then I would tell them to suck it up, put on their big boy pants, and actually try and do what we collectively pay through the nose for them to do, and deal with the kind of oversight and accountability that they have so far fought tooth and nail to avoid.

They don't always have to fire a gun. Choking people to death is just as effective. Sitting on them. Tazeing them repeatedly.

Very very few people actually want to kill cops. But way too many cops are really paranoid. I mean, if an acorn can cause you to think you’re hit and unload two magazines at a guy in handcuffs, you shouldn’t be a cop. So here we are.

I remember something a police trainer told me. About 15 percent of cops are evil and will always do the wrong things. 15 percent will always do the RIGHT thing. And the other 70 percent just goes along with whoever they are near

They can have both. It might not be logically consistent, but it gets them what they want.

The unfortunate reality is that many people -- especially on the right -- consider things like lying, manipulation and hypocrisy to be a trivial cost to get what they want. You can catch them at it 100 times but as long as it works, they won't even change their lie, let alone their views.

I mean, if the ones out to get them are sneaky or fast enough, the cop doesn't have the chance to fire their gun. ;P

Whichever excuse sound good at the time (subject to change due to police union activity)