I never said or even implied that they are bad people. Sure I know that sentiment is popular on reddit but that’s not at all the point I was trying to make.

And your points above about the inner city officers. That’s because their departments have failed them by never rotating them out of that environment. Those officers need to spend time in an area with less criminal activity to avoid the problem of seeing all citizens as criminals.

All of our problems with the police could be solved internally but the problem is both sides see themselves as being attacked. In some circumstances that seems justified but we seem to have gone away from the days where officers of the law were tasked with serving the commmunity and are now in the mindset of its us against them.

I don’t think you can compare police officers in the us to soldiers in war. The media and our society in general makes being a police officer seem like a much more dangerous job than it actually is. Sure the threat is there and that is worthy of respect for their willingness to take that risk but in nyc at least something like 95% of officers will go their entire career without ever having to fire a shot. Part of why officers are rarely punished for shooting someone is precisely because it happens so rarely that they’re not expected to really know how to handle the situation. No amount of training is going to adequately prepare you for how you’ll react to a threat on your life when adrenaline takes over

I’ve heard from a few veteran friends of mine say that they don’t talk about war, not because of the trauma, but because of the way their friends and family look at them as if they are either damaged or heartless afterwards.

I did one of these in college. I believe we had a 20 lb limit. We had a front spinner that was 14 pounds and a tiny little bit made out of hdpe plastic. That thing was downright scary. It had so much rotational energy that spinning the weapon at max speed would lift it off the groun and onto its side. Was super fun and we destroyed many many other bots with it.