I wasn’t serious when I said it last week, but I’m starting to think now that there has to be an exceptionally severe penalty for a bad shooting. Right now, it seems if a cop says, “I thought he was going for a gun!”, or even “I felt threatened!”, that he won’t even lose their job over it. There’s no incentive NOT to shoot, apart from feeling bad about it and having to perhaps endure being hated by strangers, while being hailed as a hero by other cops and the Law ‘N’ Order gang.

Sure, being a cop is risky. So is being a commercial fisherman, or a logger, or a construction worker. In fact, cop doesn’t even make the top 10 most dangerous professions.

We entrust them with the permission to use deadly force on our behalf. We should be holding them to a very high standard, so that shooting a stranger on the suspicion of maybe having a gun will stop being automatic.