It Is Time We Treat Police Brutality as a National Crisis

[DFW]

36. It has become VERY difficult to defend our country as a safe place with all these headlines

The streets of Brussels, Paris and most Italian cities are rumored, with more than a little justification, to be rife with skilled petty thieves and pickpockets, and tourist season is the happy hunting ground for them.

Many Europeans, with less justification, look in horror at headlines coming out of the United States, asking whether I am not terrified to return home, for fear of being killed by the police. Well, no, I'm not, but I'm white and usually travel with other white people or mixed crowds--not the demographic favored by rogue cops looking for some human target practice.

But this is happening with SUCH frequency, and now with instant publicity worldwide, that many people outside the USA get the impression that the cops in the USA are taking indiscriminate potshots anywhere and everywhere.

If we can't get a handle on this nationally, the problem will grow worse, and innocent cops will feel the rage, at some point in the form of bullets from the public, and the headlines will be telling a much darker tale before long. This can't be allowed to get to this point, and action to curb rogue cops MUST be initiated NOW, before too much of the public feels they are under siege and have nothing left to lose. If standing your ground means shooting the first cop you see, and your defense is self-defense, then we have let this go "under investigative review" for way too long. Murder is murder. A badge should not be a get-out-of-jail-free card.