Graham, i am sorry to hear about your friends, it is hard to loose people you are friends with. Frog and I had a friend kill himself a couple of years ago. It was one of the hardest times our group of friends have ever gone through. Be strong brotha, it does get a lil easier with time, but not much.

Yeah I see what you're saying. I know I quoted you and all but I was really talking to everyone. I just hate it when a cop shoots someone and it's automatically a crooked cop. Well it usually is if the victim is a friend of someone the person knows. THen because they are friends with their friend it automatically makes them a good person and the cop a bad one.

Sorry Graham.

I think it's pathetic that we need cops in the first place.

Tribal cultures have never had cops. They weren't needed in the first place because they didn't deal with crime. The word "crime" wasn't even in their vocabularies...at least until we showed up.

I know, I know. It's really hard for most people to understand such an amazingly simple fact...that crime is a relatively NEW phenomonon.

The fact is, crime isn't a part of "human nature" at all. Crime is a side effect of overcrowding, of the loss of cultural identity, of the loss of tribal laws. Laws handed down from generation to generation. Laws that worked for THAT tribe and no other. Laws that were as much a part of a Tribe as their language, their way of life, their identity, their customs and rituals.

Not written laws like we have now. Hammarabi! Whatever.

In cases where there is a percieved danger of a suspected gunman (gunperson?) being armed and in a public place and not in an 'open' situation then the police will shoot to kill. Where a gunperson is farting about in a public area attempting 'suicide by cop' they will employ sharp shooters to shoot the weapon out of the perps hand (I've seen it done and it works).

The difference is that your everyday cop is not a sharpshooter and is probably as scared as anyone else would be. The increasing number of gun related crimes being reported have an effect on us all. I guess you would have to talk to the individual officers to find out why they did what they did. With things like Columbine and the recently thwarted Matrix shootings becoming more prevalent I guess the shoot first, shit yourself later ethos is gonna prevail.

By the way, this is not an illustrative excuse, just a postulated reason.

My boyfriend is a security guard and has done training and can carry a gun now. He's also going into criminal justice (though doesn't want to be a cop) and I've heard him say that if a situation gets to the point where a cop needs to fire his weapon then they have to shoot to kill. I don't know all the details or anything, so I may not be completely correct, but that's what I've heard him say.

Debate about the cops aside, I'm sorry to hear about your friends.