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Of shepherds, sheep, and wolves in sheep's clothing - with guns and badges.

When I was trained as a law enforcement officer a long long time ago, we were trained to use only the force necessary to protect others and ourselves; to use deadly force only as a last resort; to always act in a way that deescalated the situation, not escalated it; and most importantly, to be willing to sacrifice our lives before we took the life of an innocent. That meant that in the split second of making a decision of shoot or don't shoot, your duty was to sacrifice your life before you harmed or killed someone you weren't absolutely certain posed a threat to you or someone else. We were repeatedly reminded that the people we were engaging with were the people we had sworn to protect and serve.
Law enforcement is an extremely difficult and thankless job when its done the way I was trained and I was in awe of the officers who trained us and did this thankless job every day. They were/are heroes - true heroes.
Today's LE officers are not trained as police but as an occupying army, and this shouldn't surprise us considering how many service members who came home from Dessert Storm/the first Iraq War were snapped up by law enforcement departments at every level of government, a practice that continues today. When today's LE respond to a call, everyone is considered a potential hostile, and their primary concern is protecting their lives and the lives of their fellow officers. As a soldier in a foreign land, where anyone not in a uniform is considered the "enemy" - this training makes sense. In war, shoot first and ask questions later is a valid and important practice, and there is nothing heroic about killing the enemy to keep yourself safe - it's just necessary for the mission to be successful. Heroics on the battlefield are very different than the heroism required of civilian law enforcement officers.
As the public, we've got to recognize and come to grips with the fact that although the job of law enforcement demands respect, just because someone wears a LE uniform - or any uniform for that matter - does not make them automatically entitled to our respect. It is hubris to believe that because persons puts on a uniform, or a title, or a black robe they can then act any way they want because the uniform, the title, or the robe automatically makes anything they do honorable and just. But hubris becomes normal if We the People are willing to go along with it.
Only sheep stand by and justify the wolf slaughtering their herd simply because the wolf is wearing a sheep's hide, and America wasn't birthed by sheep. We the People, people, We the People. Please figure it out before we don't have any shepherds left.

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