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I work for a private residential treatment facility for
teenaged at-risk boys who are diagnosed as severely
emotionally disturbed. These kids meet daily in group
sessions and weekly in private with their therapist. The
therapists are not hostage negotiators. Unless they have
built a good relationship with their clients they have
very limited ability to talk the escalated client down
from a crisis event. In this instance the cops had no
knowledge of the therapist or if he, indeed, was a real
therapist so one cop relied on whatever training told
him to shoot first and ask questions later. I see no
irony here.

I see no irony here.

I'm sorry. I was too flip concerning a very serious situation.

I prefer not to view the video, but the unrebutted assertion that the victim of the policeman's bad shoot did everything he could to cooperate makes everything harder for other policeman who rely on the good will and cooperation of the general public to do their job.

There's always talk about how valuable teachers are, and that they are underpaid. You rarely hear about the compensation of the local policeman, and from what I've seen of job postings, they aren't exactly raking it in (except maybe the ones who get scads of overtime and various types of double-dipping, which is a different discussion).

If salaries have to be increased in order to reassign or dismiss those officers who are not suited for these kinds of disturbances and get better candidates to replace them, then increase them.