of the civilian/public servant divide.

Your description minimizes the serious effects of "human error", (fatal effects - permanent effects), and doesn't account for how many of the incidents are occurring and the lack of data collected to even recognize that there is a problem.

Your frame of discussion tends to put the onus upon the public to look for/create "solutions" - when I would suggest that the first step lies with police departments to acknowledge there is a problem with reacting so fast and out of so much seeming anger that consideration of alternatives to shooting (within 2 seconds of arrival in the Tamir Rice case) doesn't seem to occur.

I don't think attempts to have a conversation will go terribly well when the framing of the discussion is rather distorted towards viewing the police (or self-appointed neighborhood watch guy) actions - while not attending to the severity of the outcomes and the frequency with which these tragedies are happening (not to mention the dis-proportionality with which these victims are people of color.)

But hey - good luck with the conversation.

to be willing to confront dangerous people, walk into chaotic situations with angry people charged with taking control of the situation, walk into these situations and confront these people when the only thing between an unarmed angry person and an armed angry person is a physical confrontation with you?

Maybe every adult should have to do two weeks of shifts in a police cruiser? Enlightenment of the actual day to day may lead to answers and a better understanding of the issue.

I think that we need to get smart on crime in this country, rather than tough & stupid. We have too many laws that have pitted law enforcement against the people. The war on drugs needs to end. The military gear needs to go back to the national guard armory. Civil asset forfeiture laws need to be repealed. No knock raids need to be outlawed and anything obtained from them needs to be thrown out in court. The privatized prison industry needs to be shut down. Also, when police get sued and lose in court because they killed someone or violated their civil rights, the settlement should come out of the police pension fund rather than getting covered by the tax payers. Police need to be held to account like most everyone else in this country and should have to pay when they break the law. I say 'most everyone else' because I realized that the torturers from the CIA have walked. The bankers who crashed our economy have walked. There are wealthy people who get off because of excuses like 'affluenza' because they're too rich to know right from wrong. Basically the police aren't going to change themselves. They have too much power, and it needs to be dialed way back. They really aren't police anymore, they are an occupying military force. I guess to answer your question directly, the answer is yes, but that change is going to have to come from the outside. Law enforcement isn't going to change itself.

Lead to snap decision making which can go south quickly. They are policy which can be changed and must occur through public pressure.

your local city council and county board who will do that. Usually, those elections are in odd-numbered years in most places.

Nobody votes in those elections, though. Voter turnout is dismally low. We can change that by turning out to vote and bringing people who think the same out to vote. Until that happens, though, change is unlikely in how law enforcement behaves. That takes change from the top, and if we don't bother to elect people who will make the changes, they won't happen.

Ask yourself this: Did I vote in the last city council, county board, and Sheriff's election? If the answer is that you did not, that's something you can correct next time.

Change the policies that bring on at least some of these issues.

There are two problems that need solved: 1) recognizing and replacing the vast majority of current police who are untrainable bullies (obviously with well trained humans, not more troglodytes) including the mayor, the police chief, and the district attorney and 2) prosecuting every cop that has killed or assaulted a civilian without sufficient legal cause. Sounds rather daunting doesn't it? Yes indeedee. Yet, the voters could relatively easily bring this about if we had the right leaders. So to answer your question: I doubt it. We have let the problem fester for much too long, very similar to Cancer. Where would we find these leaders today?

There just aren't that many people who want to be cops as it is. Take away allowances for error and add a new level of scrutiny to decisions which need immediate attention and nobody will want the risk. Prosecution brings the threshold of reasonable doubt which puts us right back where we began. Reasonable doubt is glaringly obvious in the Wilson case and was obviously present in the Zimmerman trial.

I don't wish to understate this one point. I like to use the Clean Pool Analogy. It's a lot easier to KEEP a pool clan than to MAKE a dirty pool so. We have a really dirty pool. My point was the pool may already be too dirty to clean. What do we replace them with? Extremely well-paid, well-trained professional LEOs. This will cost us a lot of money, but this is what we should have been doing all along.

There aren't all that many stellar people when you really get looking, as happens when one applies for your first police job. I've looked, they're hard to find. Then the stellar person has to want to carry a gun all day along with a shiny metal target on their chest. This person also must be willing and able to shoot another human being, to confront people who don't like confrontation, to respond to scenes with decapitated corpses and life threatening illness. Then there is the having to pee and take periodic polygraph exams. ..well it's a lot to ask for $50k...oh and by the way...if someone overpowers you and takes your gun statistically 1.3 people will be victimized with it, probably you will be the 1...now....think fast!.......... if you make the wrong decision in the second or fraction of a second before a decision must be made. ..you lose! Go to jail, directly to jail, lose your job, retirement, insurance, savings, kid's education fund...no, those jobs are going to be extremely hard to fill...

In a nutshell that is why the job attracts cowardly bullies. Also there's a lot of guns out there. I fear we're too far gone already.

You cannot change institutionalized corruption. You have to tear down the entire thing and start new.

There is no such thing as a good cop because all cops protect their own and outright white supremacists make up a portion of the police. It is corrupt top to bottom now.

Are there some? No doubt. I've been hearing about Wilson being a racist white supremacist yet haven't seen a shred of evidence to support it. I've attended 2 military graduation ceremonies each with over 1000 graduates and whites are outnumbered 2 to 1 by Hispanic grads and are about even with Asian grads.