I haven't seen a lot of the hardcore "back the blue" types rushing to defense of these police officers like they have in past cases. A few are trying. One of the spin attempts is shifting blame for Floyd's death to the people who were videotaping the incident, "why didn't they try to stop the police?" Obviously it's laughably ridiculous for anyone to actually think it would be a good idea to physically get in between cops and a suspect they were abusing. The "hero" would get a flurry of pop knots on his head from a few night sticks and then be arrested,
if not shot.
GAC05 said:
There are some people that should not be police officers. They don't have the common sense or temperament for the job. Or they had it when they started and just had it ground out of them with the stress and crap they have to deal with daily.
My guess is some police officers were formerly bullies when they were in grade school. They never grew out of dispensing cruelty onto others or they got a little too much pleasure from it. Some of this stuff is driven by whatever culture is present in a given police department. If the bullies are dominating that scene then the culture takes over and the department developments an "us versus everyone else" ethic. Most cops are decent people though. A PD with a healthy culture will do a lot of its own internal policing. It's not a flattering thing to be regarded as a psycho cop by fellow officers. One rogue cop can totally mess up the relationship police have in the community where they have to work. It makes the job that much harder for all the other police.
Generally speaking, I don't think enough is done to train police officers in conflict de-escalation. They'll train and train on tactics and other procedures. A good cop pretty much has to be a psychiatrist with a gun and badge. They have to do things like defusing angry domestic quarrels or talking a suicidal person out of doing something terrible. Too often the "ready-fire-aim" approach makes those scenarios go totally wrong.