Do the police ever kill some of those "battle-ready" private citizens standing in a group?

[Construct]

@BobLibDem

Cliven Bundy is a criminal. His armed posse should have been taken out with whatever means necessary. Police will strangle an unarmed black guy for selling single cigarettes but a well armed white guy with vigilante stooges is allowed to stiff the government for millions in grazing fees.

I agree completely. Cops should brutally suppress criminals of all races by whatever means necessary.

@Martin_Hyde

I feel there is a perspective in many police departments that they are soldiers in a war, and the communities they police are occupied territory. If they “back up” from a confrontation, it’s akin to “retreat” in a military sense, and as a soldier they aren’t supposed to retreat. Take the Darren Wilson / Michael Brown incident, a situation where I think “at the time of the shooting” Wilson was probably acting correctly due to being violently assaulted by a dangerous person (and unlike people who have never been in a fight, I know that fists can mess you up pretty quickly, especially if the guy beats the shit out of you and you have a holstered gun on you that he can take away), but Wilson could have simply backed away down the block when he realized Brown was agitated to the point of violence. There was no reason he had to confront him the way he did. However, it does go against the “war” mentality of policing.

Part of this is likely the reemergence of a “warrior class” in American society. Young men are raised in patriotic households, told that serving and dying for your country is the highest possible honor, and then head overseas to fight in America’s wars. They return home and join law enforcement or otherwise join security positions and then raise families with the same values, who continue the process. We are reaching a point - which, for what it is worth, it not at all atypical historically - where the people who secure our physical wellbeing are culturally and even genetically from those they protect. A large part of this process, I would wager, has resulted from the progressive stigmatization of law enforcement, the military, and masculinity, discouraging all but those thoroughly ensconced in traditional values from entering into these fields.