When we examine these cases, we can see some wiggle room.
Daunte Wright was not constrained, but rather had escaped constrainment and was attempting to escape as we can clearly see from the video. That is still no excuse for an experienced policewoman to confuse her sidearm for a taser.
That kid in Chicago. I have only seen once the surveillance video which shows him tossing the weapon on the other side of the fence (where police did find a firearm). The kid was too stupid in that he turned around too quickly after the police officer had seen him with that firearm in his hand. Rather, he should have first raised his empty hands to show that he was holding nothing before he turned around.
My son is a cop (not currently on the job). They are trained to have a very definite mentality of needing to take total control of the situation (without that, people die) and they know that any traffic stop could turn very fatal for them.
The downside of that is over-reaction by cops or bad cops using that as an excuse.
I realize that these excesses are wrong, but I also try to put myself in the place of the cops involved.
My son once mentioned that he had been trained to keep his back to the wall in restaurants in order to assess the entire situation in the room. Did anyone notice in that controversial final scene of
The Sopranos that Tony was sitting where he could watch everybody entering that restaurant? When Marlo Thomas (actress daughter of Danny Thomas, the entertainer who founded St. Jude's, the only major charity I contribute to, which Marlo was promoting) was on the Dean Obeidallah show, they shared stories of their shared mixed ethnicity (Marlo: Lebanese father, Italian mother; Dean: Palestinian father, Sicilian mother). Dean talked about his Sicilian grandmother who always sat facing the restaurant's entrance, because not having done that is what led to her husband's death.
There are two sides to every story, but, yes, there needs to be police reform.
Edited by dwise1, : added modifiers