If you can stand watching them, the videos of the LAPD mall shooting really are revealing. You can see in real time how a bad situation was only worsened by the introduction of a bunch of scrambling cops armed with military weaponry and dim-bulb grasp of commando tactics.
https://twitter.com/SababaUSA/status/1476924148916097035
There's a moment where they get off the top of the escalator that could be a comedy in a different context - one cop shouts, not reassuringly, "ALL VICTIMS COME TO US," while another keeps hectoring the rest of the group to get into "diamond formation."
Then someone spots the suspect and the whole tactical thing seems to break down as they run directly at him, with the cop who pulled the trigger barging to the front while everyone else shouts for him to slow down. And he immediately blows away the suspect and a 14-year old.
The impression is less "This cop is especially bad" and more "This is a bunch of random joes who have been given high-powered weapons and told they're a crack team, and of course in reality that leads to disaster." In other words it's an indictment of modern policing.
Yes, the suspect was a menace who seemed likely to kill a bystander in short order. But only one person killed a bystander, and that was the cop spraying a mall with an assault weapon while his colleagues with less lethal alternatives raced to catch up.
https://twitter.com/AdamMantine/status/1476941397626261510
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