Seems to me that the ease and alacrity with which the two Seattle police officers gunned down the pregnant woman holding the knife on June 18th was a direct reflection of the recent jury decisions on police shootings, and that was before the acquittal in Minnesota. Police have been given virtually a free hand in shooting civilians by a whole string of juries, and I suspect we will be seeing a lot more itchy trigger figure shootings. The bar has been set so low that all an officer has to think is that someone could conceivably be a potential cop killer and even if it turns out there was no basis for such an assumption whatsoever, it does not matter. All that matters is that the cop thought so. Reality has no place in judging police shootings anymore. What matters is what a cop thinks might be reality. Let that sink in. Police have a right to kill based on their perceptions of a possible threat alone. No actual threat is necessary. There is not a police department in the country that sought or supports that assumption. This was a doctrine created by defense attorneys defending what are essentially rogue officers and turned into law by not one but nearly every jury these past couple years deciding police shooting cases. I don’t think this has sunk in yet among the American public. Perhaps when people who are not black males are gunned down for no apparent reason by a paranoid cop who a jury then inevitably acquits, maybe then it will occur to everyone just how bizarre and dangerous a thing this is. Is there a way to stop it? No, there is not. Several juries have seen to that. The precedent has been set and under our common law system, this as yet unnamed doctrine is now on the books in more than one state. Worse yet, it can also be cited in Stand Your Ground states. It has suddenly become a lot easier to kill someone and get away with it in this country.