Not to take anything away from the work, and the writing, that's been done over the past few months, but this has been nagging at me more and more as I've been reading. I'm not sure there's anything here, but let me present this to you, and then you can tell me how much of an idiot I am.
To put it as simply as possible - what if a major factor in this whole latest set of shootings and related events is that police, and the associated Prison Industrial Complex, are afraid of losing their jobs and/or profits?
Factor 1: There has been an overall decline in violent crime, probably due to factors which are at least partially extraneous to law enforcement, such as the elimination of lead from gasoline. The obvious result, over time, should be either the downsizing of police forces, or their taking on more socially proactive duties in addition to preventing/investigating immediate crime.
Factor 2: The War on Drugs is sputtering inelegantly to a halt. With it, unless some major substitute is found, will go one of the main causes of arrest and incarceration.
Factor 3: Most cities/counties/states will go for the elimination of services which have only positive results over those which, seemingly, prevent negative, scary results. We generally cut teachers and social services personnel rather than police forces, even when we know we're trading short term security for long term stability, especially if we think there's something immediate to fear.
Factor 4: While it seems a bit of a stretch to assume a conspiracy among police unions, a number of seemingly coordinated actions taken across the country during the Occupy heyday point to a fairly strong network of which police departments are certainly a part.
We usually think of lobbying efforts as directed at Congress, but although we know there is a fair amount of that going on, it makes more sense in this case, if you stand to profit by increasing the prison population, that there would be "lobbying" more at the state and county level.
People have been asking why police training has shifted from "serve and protect" to "shoot if you're uncomfortable", and ascribing it to any number of problems with the people who go into policing. What if training programs have shifted to those which guarantee the maximum amount of mayhem and/or arrests? This accomplishes two things: it increases the number of offenders who end up doing prison time, and it makes the situation appear to be one of incipient violence if the police presence is lessened in any way. Two positive (!) results for the price of one, from the point of the companies making a profit off of the situation.
Actually, three results, because the situation can't help but increase the majority/minority polarization, at least short term, which makes incidents leading to arrests a bit more likely. A win/win/win scenario - for somebody.
I'm not going to try and apologize for the individual police on the ground who are doing the dirty work on this, but I think it might be worthwhile to consider them at least partially as dupes, rather than inherently evil.