Choot 'em in da Leg!

Yes, I believe we need to have some sort of police reform in this country. But someone please tell Joe Biden, "shooting 'em in the leg" should not be any part of that reform.

I've heard Biden say it at each of his two town halls, as a means of "de-escalating" a situation.

First, how on Earth is shooting someone in the leg a de-escalation tactic? That doesn't even remotely make sense.

De-escalation can be described as a series of tactics to calm a person or a situation down. It's "Verbal Judo," persuading an angry person to do something they may not want to do at first.

Anyone who's been shot in the leg is unlikely to be calm, and if they happen to have a gun too, you can bet they will be returning fire.

By the time the weapon comes out, it's too late for de-escalation. Drawing a weapon is the last resort and the very act itself is among the highest levels of force.

Where the reform needs to come, in part, is giving police more options before drawing the weapon, and training to better recognize situations where a weapon might not be required.

We've done some of that with Tasers and pepper spray and other non-lethal means of subduing a suspect. But we need to do more.

The idea of bringing psychologists and social workers in to help in some situations has merit. We can't expect police officers to continue to take on those roles in society.

We could also take a look at what mental health support we provide to people in need. There are a lot of those types of options that we can expand upon, but shooting them in the leg is not one.

This ain't the movies. Once the weapon comes out and the first trigger pull happens, every round is going center mass and it's not stopping until the target it neutralized.

People often criticize police when they shoot someone 15 times, even in justified shootings. Why can't they just shoot once? In the leg?

Well for one, he's going to keep getting shot until he drops and is no longer a threat. And second, in the heat of the moment, when it's shoot or be shot, and tunnel vision is kicking in, and the cortisol is flowing, and your ears stop working, the only thing you can see is center mass.

I've been through a lot of firearms training, shoot/don't shoot stuff, live-fire shoot houses, high-stress role-play scenarios, firearms scenario simulators. I've even experience the real deal a few times, once responding to an armed robbery in progress, and a couple of times on the bad end of ambushes in the sandbox.

It ain't pretty. Training helps. But no amount of training and experience would make shooting someone in the leg a good option once the weapon comes out.

Is Breonna Taylor a BLM issue?

George Floyd. Elijah McClain. Philando Castile. Michael Brown. Eric Garner. Freddie Gray. Breonna Taylor?

First, let me say, I support the BLM movement, 100 percent. Without a doubt, black people, primarily males, are killed by police because they are black.

I'm not saying that any cop goes into a situation intent on killing a black man, but that their implicit biases, inadequate training, and systemic racism contribute to proportionally more unarmed black males being killed by police.

But that's not what happened with Taylor. She was accidentally killed by police returning fire after her boyfriend started shooting at them. It wasn't because she was black.

Sadly, this happens way more often than it should, people accidentally shot by police, and it highlights a huge problem with police today.

To some people's surprise, the cops who killed Taylor have not been charged in her death and only one of those involved was recently convicted of an unrelated charge. This also isn't unusual.

There's a great article by the AP that highlights the problem here. It details several cases of accidental shootings by police, due mostly to poor training.

What stands out is that in almost every case, the officer is never charged and ends up returning to work. How is that even possible?

I understand police work is not easy. In fact, I spent the first part of my work life in law enforcement. So I get it. I understand the pressure in life or death situations and the grave consequences of drawing your weapon.

It takes a lot of training, continued training that most cops do not get, to do the job right.

In Taylor's case, officers made a chain of mistakes in the investigation and subsequent raid that led to Taylor's accidental shooting.

From the incomplete investigation on Taylor's apartment to the no-knock warrant that became a knock warrant, that was likely executed as a "lightly knocking" warrant. A chain of mistakes due likely to poor training and overzealous policing.

That's not even touching on our country's gun problem that led Taylor's boyfriend to be legally carrying a gun in the first place (and where are the conservatives defending him in this case?).

I think it's important to recognize this larger systemic problem. It's not just about people targeted by police because of their race, but the bigger problem of police training, mindsets, and function.

I'll post more on those problems later, like the militarization of police, symbology, etc.