He Was Just Having A Bad Day

[dutch777]

2. And the 8 killed ...I guess they just had a REALLY bad day. Unbelievably insensitive and stupid

I lived in Germany for a number of years. The average police officer there had to have at least a 4 year college degree and in things like social science, psychology or police science. Many had advanced degrees. I don't know about this officer, but I know in our state (WA), you can be a HS grad, have a reasonably clean criminal record and do 8 weeks at the police academy and you can be a cop in pretty much any jurisdiction in the state. I suspect that is applicable in much of the US. I wonder how much we could improve policing by better educating our officers? I know the reason the bar is set so low, is even at that bottom rung, we can't get enough cops. But why can't we require and support applicable continuing education and raise the bar for everyone's benefit? We really get what we pay for, and it is frightening. And like teachers, we expect cops to also be psychologists, social workers and family counselors with virtually zero training and little support.