I'm largely with @newtboy on this one.

Charles Kinsey provides an excellent and concrete example of someone who thought that there was zero chance that what he was doing would lead to getting shot. He did absolutely nothing wrong, and from what I/we can tell actually handled everything as well as anyone could reasonably hope for. If I was in that situation, I guarantee I wouldn't have had the presence of mind to lay down on my back with my hands straight up and calmly explain what was going on.

So, as a white person who has never been in a situation like that, all I can do is try to put myself in the shoes of how a black person would see this. Here's a guy who acted perfectly -- a standard that I can't imagine holding myself to -- and he still got shot. And the police response is (so far) boilerplate utter bullshit.

I can't really imagine what it would be like to be black in the US, and have direct experiences with this sort of thing (even less extreme examples like profiling traffic stops) on top of WAY too frequent reports of this stuff happening. But I can try, and all I can say is that it seems terrifying.

Push people far enough, and they start pushing back. I think that's what @newtboy is saying. I absolutely do NOT condone violence against police, or painting them with a broad brush and claiming they are ALL racist ... but at some point, I can absolutely understand that there is going to be blowback for this shit that has gone on way too often for way too long.

In order to slow down / prevent / stop that blowback, police need to be working their asses off to change that image. The "blue line" mentality of protecting their own even when they make (massive) mistakes has got to go. Yeah, it is a hard job. Yeah, it means that police should be held to a higher standard of conduct than average Joe citizens. Yeah, it means that police need to accept that they face a certain amount of danger and risk -- danger that will make it hard to be calm, cool, and collected. But that's the job. Protect and serve the people, not themselves or the police department.

Until all the good cops (and there are lots of them, including some friends of mine) get together and make it clear that the actions of these bad cops are utterly unacceptable, things will continue to get worse.