Thanks for your comments, Erik. We have a police shortage largely for the same reason that we have a shortage of health care workers, teachers, etc. We call it "the graying of America" (changing democraphics that have increased the number of retirees and decreased the size of the work force--a problem that is only going to become more severe in the coming years).

But you are right: police in large urban areas have an exceedingly difficult and often unpleasant job and get little respect from the public. We no doubt loose a lot of potentially good officers as a result. The upshot is that police departments are forced to lower their standards, in some cases, to recruit the officers that they need. So an applicant who would have been turned away ten years ago because of his or her score on a psych test is now given a uniform, a badge and a gun.

That's why I really see red when I read about a bad cop--they make it so much more difficult for those who are trying their best under difficult circumstances. I live in Honolulu and our former police chief and his wife--a former assistant district attorney--are currently serving prison sentences for a variety of criminal acts (Louis and Katherine Kealoha). They took down several officers who were complicit with them, but the entire department has to deal with the resulting loss of credibility and respect.

I might quibble a bit with your comment, "All this can be avoided if police weren't afraid to do their job." I think a bigger issue is that we are constantly asking the police to do things that are NOT their job, and for which they have inadequate training. Many officers spend a great deal of time responding to incidents involving the mentally ill (including those with chronic addiction). Social work teams would be more appropriate in many of these cases.

While demonstrations and picketing are common in cities, full scale rioting of the scope that we saw in the wake of George Floyd's murder is not. And expecting police to manage these one-off situations well is probably unrealistic, given the size of the typical police department, the shortage of officers, the lack of experience that many officers have with riots, etc.

It seems to me that this is an area where the state National Guard and Air National Guard could play constructive roles. When I was in ther Guard, we trained to step into active dutry roles in a time of war. But the Guard belongs to the states, and riots--nor military invasions--are what state and local governments are most likely to deal with. Members of the Guard train for two days each month and two weeks in the summer. Dedicating half of this time to military training, and the other half to riot control, crowd management and crisis intervention makes a lot of sense to me.

Thanks again for your comments!