There but for the grace of God, etc.

This is downright scary. While some of the extremely high rate of police-instigated armed violence in the States is presumably down to the fact that it's just the way things are over there (the very high level of gun ownership and so forth), this has to be a warning of what can happen if support for the police becomes blind support for the police. There is such a thing as too much trust, and certainly such a thing as too much power concentrated in one institution.

While I've not read up on this subject at all, I also wonder if some of this problem - and it must be a problem if officers can get away with excuses such as 'I didn't mean to shoot him, I thought I was using my Taser' - might be down to the local control of both police often the courts in the US. This must foster self-reinforcing old boy's clubs that, in conjunction with the local politicians who usually hold the purse strings, have no interest in properly investigating police misconduct and rather a lot of interest in maintaining the status quo.

No comment, at this stage, on what this might imply for the suggested elected police commissioners in the UK......