Non-lethal engagement by law enforcement

Was thinking about lethal engagement by law enforcement. I can say anecdotally that yes it is the case that law enforcement officers reach for their firearms in a kind of knee-jerk response which is frequently completely unacceptable and inappropriate for situations. For example once I was driving along a long stretch of highway really late at night and realized that I was not able to stay awake. I considered my life to be in danger because I was fading in and out of consciousness at the wheel, and knew I needed to pull over and rest.

I was also in the middle of nowhere. There was nothing but farms. So I did what seemed the most logical thing, pulled my old station wagon off on a small dirt road that was probably part of a farm (it was really dark so I don’t know exactly where the road went but I did discern that there were no houses or anything there, it just seemed like a farm field).

Well, some time later the next thing I know I’m awake in the back seat of the station wagon, a blindingly bright floodlight shining into my car. I start to get up and there’s a cop standing at the window of my car pointing a gun and me, and the asswipe is yelling at me telling me not to move. What a fucking piece of shit.

Another instance was when someone had broken into my car parked along a street near where I was living, close to downtown at the time. And when two police officers arrived and I was reporting the break-in to them, I just instinctively was standing there with my hands in my pockets (it was probably also cold outside), and one of them, this asswipe woman, literally unholsters her gun and has it ready to shoot me and commands me to take my hands out of my pockets.

Yes, I’ve had guns pointed at me by cops for the most absolute bullshit reasons, and I can definitely say that the cops in both cases were absolute asswipes and probably should not have had their jobs.

The bottom line is, there needs to be some kind of rules for dealing with people that does not allow the use of projectile weapons at all in certain close range situations. I can see a projectile weapon being useful if there’s a suspect far away with a firearm. But for close-range encounters with people who probably don’t even have firearms, pulling out a firearm – a projectile weapon – is a totally inappropriate response.

If there is no technology that law enforcement has to either protect themselves or give themselves the ability to stun or disorient a potential threat at short range, then there needs to be. But pulling guns out on unarmed people for bullshit reasons is wrong and its well past the time that this needs to change, given all these killings.

And one other thing: All law enforcement officers, since they are entrusted with carrying weapons, must be required to record full video and audio of all encounters they have.

I say this because, in addition to the above-mentioned incidents involving firearms pointed at me, there have been numerous instances when cops said bullshit things that were extremely unprofessional and/or wrong. They frequently operate with a sense of impunity and basically like asswipes who don’t even give a shit about the actual law. I’ve experienced complete contradictions on issues by cops, where one or more cops said one thing to me about an issue, and then later another or other cops said something completely contradictory.

That is absolute bullshit and if it were any company that had to interact successfully with the public to survive, they would have gone out of business long ago.