When a cop shoots a suspect, there's often little investigation or transparency. The argument against these things is that cops are putting their lives at risk to do their jobs, and can't do their jobs effectively if they have the public always looking over their shoulder.
But this incident shows that the arguments against investigation and transparency are bankrupt. This officer bravely put his life at risk to do his job. Investigation and transparency show him to be worthy of our respect. It isn't the public looking over his shoulder preventing him from doing his job, it's the aggressively militarized culture of the profession in which he serves.
Statistically, some nonzero percentage of people with a gun are nutjob cop killers. That's the end of the argument right there. There's nothing else to be done because cops aren't trained to gamble on the situation (and keep in mind that cops are dealing with a large sample size, though these look like isolated incidents to us). It's super weird to me that this isn't obvious to people. Maybe armchair theorizing about situations involving guns simply has too much allure.
Here, the man was armed with a gun (albeit unloaded). He was unstable enough for his girlfriend to put the police on suicide watch during her 911 call. If the police had to take classes on handling various situations, this particular scenario would be a final exam question. Moreover, I'm afraid that a majority of our policemen would have flunked this question.
Law enforcement is meant to be complex, and should require sophisticated knowledge in law and philosophy as prerequisites for aspiring policemen. Each police officer working on duty is not only serving as the enforcer but also as a judge. He judges whether a subject should be let go, detained, or - shocking as it may seem - be put to death.
A well functioning civil society founded on the idea of some social contract is bound to provide its citizens with some rights and protection. The prospect of summary execution at the any sign of threat to its law enforcers appears to fall short of this requirement in my eyes.
The officer in question in the topic being discussed, Stephen Mader, acted ahead of his time. He demonstrated the form of policing possible in our society with further sophistication of the minds of our officers. He took decisions that prioritized the right (to life) of his citizens. He was fired for doing so.
I am sure he would have shot Mr. Williams, having had his gun trained on him, had he chosen to make any threatening move.
It is a fine line, I admit. But is this not what progress is based on? Have we not advanced our civilization by continuing to investigate finer and finer still of dimensions? Why do we continue to rely on such crude measures when it comes to law enforcement? Are we incapable of serving our citizenry with increased space for preservation of their rights?
While I certainly agree that society would benefit from imposing more demanding recruitment standards on police, I think you are taking things too far. We can't expect police officers to be philosophers, and frankly, a philosopher isn't guaranteed to do any better a job at policing than anyone else. Most debates in philosophy have no relevance to policing–knowledge of debates around the existence of God, the problem of universals, the relationship between mind and body, the nature of personal identity, the philosophy of science, etc., are unlikely to make you a better cop. Even those parts of philosophy which might have some relevance – in particular ethics, political philosophy, and philosophy of law – there are such a wide range of views that we couldn't presume any particular practical benefits from a philosophical education. Even if you believe that accepting certain philosophical views (maybe say Rawlsian liberalism) might make police behave better, to truly have a sophisticated knowledge of philosophy you have to be aware of diametrically opposed views also, and once you teach people both sides of the argument they might adopt the opposite position from you. Conceivably, exposure to some philosophical viewpoints might even have a deleterious effect on law enforcement (e.g. some philosophers have defended extremist political positions, such as Gentile's support for fascism, Heidegger's support for Nazism, Nozick's support for legalising slavery).
As far as law goes, certainly police need a basic understanding of the parts of the law relevant to their job, especially criminal law, criminal procedure, laws of evidence, civil rights, etc. However, I don't think "sophisticated knowledge" is required or would in most cases add any value. Sophisticated knowledge of the law is what we have lawyers for, and while most police could likely benefit from some greater education in the law, demanding every cop have a law degree would just be a massive waste of resources; plus, a person with a law degree driving around in a patrol car arresting petty criminals and handing out speeding tickets might get bored rather quickly.
The list of lists of killings by police officers in different countries is pretty eye-opening [1]. In many European countries police killing someone is always news and happens at most a few times per year, even in countries comparable in size to the US.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lists_of_killings_by_law_enfor...
The insanity in our government and police departments is completely out of control. If they can't behave the way the people of the country want them to, then we have to get rid of them.
