No its murder, just like a doctor who kills a patient not by a simple accident.  Yes, they put their lives at risk because the job calls for it but it does not excuse negligence.  Using that as an excuse to accept those accidents is why we are where we are today.  Giving the police more deadly ways to kill its citizens is why we are here today instead of better training and non lethal methods to address problems.  America culture is shoot first and ask questions later and the way you just fling off these mistakes is why nothing changes.  Its why the system protects bad, incompetent cops who should not be on the job and why they go free to go to another city or state and do it all over again.  There is definitely more good cops than bad but if the system continues to protect the bad then it will never get the full trust of the people.

Anyway, saying a person got fired compared to another person losing their life as a person not going free seems like you judge a life pretty cheaply.  Maybe that is also why in America we still have the same issues crop up all the time.  No real importance on life, just other means for finding ways to kill our fellow citizens.

Im not excusing anything. People make mistakes. Its just that in the case of the police, it can cost a person their life. 

Sure some police officers could use better training, but maybe we should also think about what we can do. Like stop resisting arrest for starters. So many people just have zero respect for authority. Do what the police says and if you feel wronged in any way, then make a complaint as soon as you are able to.

I dont believe there are many bad cops. There are some and they should be weeded out, but defunding and smearing them is not going to help. It will just make the good ones leave.

The issues with policing aren't about the individual. The question isn't "how many bad cops do we have, and can we get rid of them?" because the system creates this behavior. We know that militarization of the police force increase police violence without improving police or public safety. We know that the training regimens in many police forces contribute to issues with violence. We know that there are serious, systemic issues with race throughout the entire justice system. 

We know the system is broken. It creates these people who step over the line and then it does everything in its power to protect them.

So yes, we probably should reduce police funding. We should be getting rid of all of this military equipment from our police forces. We should be diverting funds, so we don't have an armed force reporting to issues of mental health, drug addiction and many other issues, and we should be pouring more money into the things that we know decreases criminality, like social support systems and education. The police system is not the best system to reduce and prevent crime. Its actually pretty terrible at contributing to that goal. Hell, our prison systems increase recidivism.

This isn't something you can fix by kicking out a handful of murderers and white supremacists. We need reforms that are far more foundational than that.

Yeah, Im not touching the systemic racism narrative. If you want to believe in that, then by all means. 

I mean, its true, but even if you don't want to personally deal with that, that is only mentioned in one sentence of my post. There are about fifteen more, so you can ignore one of the worst parts of our criminal justice system and still have a whole pile of shit left over.

Not really sure what you want me to say. You must have seen the statistics regarding crime in the US. The police interactions that ends up in someone innocent or someone following police orders getting killed are slim to none.

Its hard to argue what the correct way of training a police officer is. If you can stay calm and collected while someone is suddenly pulling out a gun or a knife and start attacking you, then please join the police force. They could use that kind of extraordinary skills. 

One of the reasons crime is so high in the US is because of how broken our justice system is. For decades we have been shipping non-violent offenders to prison, which breeds a culture of criminality and increases recidivism. It is also a symptom of our failure to fund public schooling, housing, and social programs which are powerful tools to reduce criminality. 

The fact that we pour an obscene amount of money into our policing systems and we still have higher crime rates than most other comparable countries should demonstrate that this is not the solution. 

Further, I think "justified" police shootings are just as much of a societal ill as "unjustified" police shootings. Too often police escalate conflicts to a point where they feel they need to use force. Our police system too often is trained to view itself as warriors or militant outfits, creating an "us v them" mentality between them and the communities they are supposed to serve. This leads to things like the clip I posted a week or so ago, where a man was being questioned by police on the street when another officer came up behind him, wrapped his arms around him and threw him to the ground, breaking his wrist, only for that officer to then be told "this is the wrong guy". Even if it was "the right guy", this behavior was uncalled for. If someone has a warrant for their arrest, you don't need to tackle them and break their wrist. That is escalation of conflict.

This type of thing happens all the time. The goal of many police is not to act in a way to improve public safety, but to criminalize people. It is to look at everyone as a criminal and think "I just need to prove it". This was at the heart of "stop and frisk" which was a popular police tool for quite some time. These tactics of going after minor criminalities like possession of marijuana do nothing but breed larger criminality, and foster mistrust of police. 

If we were to improve training for these officers and change how we respond to individuals who are not an apparent threat, many of these instances that lead to deaths could be neutralized or completely avoided. We do not need to view our high casualty counts as symptoms of normal policing. They are not. They are symptoms of many things: Inadequate public funding, lack of trust in police, lack of trust in the criminal justice system, poor training in de-escalation, harmful mindsets regarding policing, etc.

Im sorry, but these things doesnt happen all the time. They are dealing with thousands of cases each day. The police is not perfect and if there are things they can do in order to minimize casualties, then that would be great. But its not as easy as just more training. The lack of trust in the police is thanks to the media for the most part. 

When a white man kills a person of color, its national news and is discussed and analyzed to death. When a person of color kills a white man, it might get a mention on page 7 of your local newspaper. Its ridiculous. No wonder some people think the US is a racist hellhole.

The police killed 9 unarmed black people in all of 2019. 13 black people were killed in one city in the span of 24 hours this weekend. That includes two children. Three other black children were killed in another part of the country. This shit happens every damn week.

Im not saying that makes the police officers who do shitty things any better, but there are other problems in the US that could use these kinds of protests and scrutiny. 

I agree with you on the prison system in the US though. That shit is just bananas.

I agree that it isn't as easy as more training. Again, you should increase funding for social services, remove all military equipment, change the type of calls that police respond to, change what police are supposed to do when they respond to calls, create a system of legal and professional accountability for police misconduct, change and implement numerous laws and regulations to alter how police are supposed to respond to incidents, increase ties between the community and the police force including attempting to hire more members of the community into the police force AND remove the warrior training that is often utilized, replace that warrior training with training on bias, de-escalation and community centered policing. There is more, but that's a good start. 

As for the lack of trust in the police, the police don't really need much help with that. Just over the past couple months with the protests, there were probably hundreds of incidents of police misconduct captured on film and broadcast around the world.

Now, you mention something interesting here. You essentially say that white on black crime is given far more publicity than black on white crime. That seems to be the opposite of reality. This entire article is a pretty good breakdown on the failures of the media when it comes to depictions of crime and its relation to race, but I want to specifically discuss the assertion you've made (the data is taken from multiple sources listed within the provided source):

Overall, this implication that the media puts on kid gloves when it comes to black on white crime is pure bullshit. The media consistently contributes to racial stereotypes and has a huge issue with prioritization of white, often female victims of crime, while downplaying and often criminalizing black victims. 

Its not pure bullshit. It might have been in 2014 when the data you provided was taken. It was wrong then and its wrong now. 

I mean can you even name one of the 19 unarmed white people killed by the police last year? Hell can you name one from the last 5 years?