There are massive systemic issues with the police forces in the USA. You've already mentioned those I think are the most concerning ones; a way too short training program, the proliferation of firearms and the policy of using firearms early and often (I'd also add the problem of US police officers rarely requesting back-up for "routine" procedures like getting a suspect in a car like in this case but instead brute forcing a bad solution). However, I don't think we can say that episodes like this one happens with shocking regularity. Very rarely do we hear of accidental shootings from police, but rather about lethal force being intentionally exercised in situations when it is obvious that it was not needed.
Wright's death sticks out because it seems to be an honest mistake from a police officer who failed to keep their cool and wasn't an intentional use of lethal force. I think it deserves to be discussed as a separate issue due to that. That said, some of the solutions to minimize these situations will be the same as the ones to stop police from frivolously discharging their firearms against people of color.
"We hear of" being the operative words, because these events only became well-known due to the proliferation of video recording technology, the first being Rodney King that I can recall due to having been filmed by a bystander of whom the cops weren't aware. Beyond that, cops have proven themselves exceedingly good at covering their tracks on paperwork, and generally enjoy the support of municipal governments, their own unions, and a public eager to make excuses for them at every available opportunity.
Even failing to account for this, what the public is learning now these events
do occur with rather shocking regularity. With enough regularity to create studies of shootings that resulted from drawing a firearm instead of a taser, and draw conclusions based upon that data to advise police departments where on cops' kit tasers should be placed relative to their firearms to minimize the likelihood of occurrence. This really is a point on which people should take a step back, and think about the full ramifications that police have to have rules and regulations about this in the first place; that came from
somewhere.
And, it's not
just the circumstances of cops drawing firearms instead of tasers -- forget for a second this was a violent confrontation that had been provoked and escalated by the officers themselves.
Compounding and aggravating the issues are the events such as those that led to Philando Castile's death, where an officer shot at him seven times at point-blank range in a panic for having simply been calmly advised by Castile he was a licensed carrier and had a legal firearm, legally stowed, in his vehicle. Events such as mistaking items that are obviously not guns, for guns, and preemptively opening fire. Events such as being shot multiple times for simply complying to police requests. Or, events such as being shot for resisting an unlawful detention entirely absent probable cause or even reasonable suspicion by a clearly belligerent officer who had already committed assault on the man shot.
The book This Is Not a Gun collects personal responses to these objects, which include a cell phone, hairbrush, Wii remote, and underwear.
hyperallergic.com
Simply put, you're wrong. Wright's death does not in any way "stick out". It
doesn't deserve to be discussed as a separate issue.
