Police circulate picture of wrong man after Dallas shooting.

[Normchacho]

Nuvendil said:
Sorry if I come off to you two as gruff, but I'm just sick of the outrage culture around...well this and everything else. Seeing every single action of the police, at least where a minorities are involved (sorry but it's the truth), be examined and analyzed to death and almost always judged based on hindsight. I'm sick of every single mistake, no matter how honest or how ultimately inconsequential it all turns out to be, is blown out of proportion to insinuate cops don't care, are out of control, or are incompetent.

Was this a mistake? Yes. Could it have been avoided? Maybe, though it's harder to coordinate information flow at this time, I mean do you even realize how many calls probably flooded the Police HQ at that time? But is the guy dead or even hurt? No. Did they arrest him and hold him all day? No. Did they use unnecessary force or brutality? No. It was a mistake, an honest mistake for which the whole Dallas PD does not deserve all this outrage. And I personally find it very frustrating when THIS becomes the focus after everything else that happened and all the OTHER actions of the Police in the last two days.

And if I sound like I come down largely on the side of cops at times, it's because I've watched as this has slowly devolved into a borderline witch hunt at times. I've seen protesting groups march chanting that they want dead cops and they want them now, chanting "pigs in a blanket, fry em like bacon." And I've seen shootings that weren't cut and dry but you better freaking believe the victim of the shooting was white washed and the cop was preemptively declared the reincarnation of Hitler and you had better freaking agree or you are clearly a racist. Instead of taking everything and making outrage out of it, instead of stoking the flames of hate, we should all take a step back and breath and act like civilized human beings?

I agree with a lot of what you're saying. Being a cop is very difficult, and very dangerous and for every bad cop out there, there's a million cops working hard to protect their communities.

I'm not saying it wasn't an honest mistake, or even that it wasn't an easy mistake to make. I'm simply saying that it was a dangerous mistake to make that could have realistically been avoided.

Luckily nothing happened, but it doesn't change the fact that they needlessly put that man in danger.

Also, there's nothing wrong with coming down on the side of cops. The vast majority of the time cops are doing the right thing. There is absolutely a middle ground betweenbeing a racist and hating cops. Cops need to be able to defend themselves, but also seem to need to be better prepared to handle certain situations. I honestly don't really get why that's so controversial.