Here's another story that involves a cop, a member of the public, and a controversy over the use of force.
The cop, a 20-year veteran, is on leave and facing termination for getting a distressed and suicidal student a glass of water instead of tasing him:
The officer, a 20-year police veteran who had been working at the school for 8 years, responded to the incident before being joined by three Marina officers. The Monterey Herald reported that, according to Marina Police Chief Edmundo Rodriguez, the student had a knife and hammer in his room when the officers reached him, and may have attempted to light himself on fire....
The Salinas Californian reported that Soloman said the Monterey Bay officer managed to calm the student and get him to sit down before his colleagues from Marina reached the scene.
But the other officers used their Tasers on the student after their college colleague left the room to fulfill the student’s request for a glass of water. The campus officer subsequently refused to follow an order to use his own Taser on the student....
Rodriguez’s department later issued a “failure to act” complaint against the campus officer, accusing him of not engaging in a “highly agitated situation.”
Didn't defusing and resolving volatile situations without having to resort to violence use to be the mark of a successful intervention by law enforcement?
Clearly it's not just the "bad apples" of policing that we're hearing about treating the citizenry like the enemy. The bad apples are the ones who are driving policy and procedure and drumming out the last remaining good apples who still hold to that older ideal.