We now live in a country where police encounters are streamed like reality television and judged by people whose legal education consists of YouTube clips and reruns of cop shows. Every stop suddenly produces a self appointed constitutional scholar. They are confident. Loud. Wrong. And aggressively committed to proving it.
These individuals believe they understand the law better than the officer standing three feet away with a badge, a radio, and the legal authority to end their day or their life. They escalate minor encounters into career ending events through obstruction, resistance, and theatrical defiance. Had they simply complied, stayed calm, and shut up, they likely would have driven away with a warning. Instead, they insist on testing dominance over someone whose job requires split second decisions under threat.
Police officers typically know almost nothing about the person they are confronting beyond what dispatch relays. Witness statements are often exaggerated or outright false. That uncertainty demands caution. Then the subject makes sudden movements. Hands disappear. A simulated weapon appears. A replica gun is raised. A knife enters the twenty one foot reactionary gap. At that point, cognition gives way to training and survival reflex.
The officer fires. Not out of anger. Not out of ideology. Out of neurobiology. The amygdala takes over. Motor programs execute. The threat is stopped using department issued 9mm ammunition that requires multiple rounds to achieve what a more powerful caliber would do faster. More shots does not mean more intent. It means physics.
Then the threat is down. The officer is alive. And the real damage begins.
Acute stress response. Cortisol surge. Auditory exclusion. Time distortion. Shaking. Shock. Followed immediately by a departmental investigation designed to assume fault until proven otherwise. Media reports appear before toxicology results. The usual grifting activists emerge, diagnosing excessive force from their couches. Mental health explanations are retroactively applied to justify behavior that was violent, suicidal, or both.
The officer’s life implodes. Career on hold. Reputation destroyed. Family dragged into it. All because someone decided to turn a routine encounter into a performance.
What causes these events is not mysterious. Severe depression. Psychosis. Personality disorders. Substance intoxication. And increasingly, a cultural fantasy that dying in a confrontation with police turns criminals into martyrs. Violence against police has become normalized. Even fashionable. The George Floyd case, politicized beyond recognition, taught a dangerous lesson: fight the police on camera and you might win posthumously.
This behavior spreads. It is contagious. The videos inspire imitation. Legacy media thrives on outrage. Social media rewards chaos. Criminals are rebranded as saints. Police are cast as villains. Reality does not survive the edit.
Some people truly intend to die. Others want notoriety. Both are using officers as unwilling instruments of self destruction. Until we stop glorifying criminals and demonizing survival, this will continue
And no, it is not going to stop anytime soon.
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