Are tasers, night sticks, etc just decoration?

I know shoot first, maybe ask questions later is the motto of the police, but come on.

It is deeply troubling that the Portland police seem to adopt a "shoot-to-kill" policy instead of "shoot-enough-to-stop-the-guy-and-no-more".

It's also deeply troubling that we have a police union who leap to defend their own without waiting for things like facts to come out first. Maybe it'll turn out that they're right, and the cop's life was truly in imminent danger, and there was no alternative way of saving the cops life (since you have to meet both those criteria for killing someone to be even halfway justifiable). After all, once the facts had come out it turned out that the first two shootings this year were both perfectly justified. But when the union make preemptive statements like that, it prevents me from taking anything they say seriously.

Suicide by cop. Again.

Bullets can go astray. The officer was correct in assuming that the assailant meant him serious harm or death, but the officer risked the lives of innocent bystanders, when all he needed to do was to distance himself from the assailant, call for backup, then toss a big fishing net over the guy. Even the Fire Department could have managed to do that. Police need to be thoroughly trained in Aikido. This sort of thing never happens in Japan.

We need to start calling the Girl Scouts to handle these situations rather than the militarized police that our nation has come under siege by. At least the Girl Scouts could ask troubled, mentally ill people if they would like to talk and have some Girl Scout cookies instead of just shooting them.

I sincerely doubt that any Portland police officer who has ever shot anybody here, was ever in war. These bullies romanticize killing and imagine there to be prestige in so doing. I say send them to Afghanistan while they wait out their suspension.