Leaving home justifies no one—certainly not peace officers serving the public—assaulting, much less KILLING, a person. Beyond that, one by one:

Garner not only did not pick the fight but, ironically, witnesses say he had just STOPPED one between others (where were the "peace officers" during that?) He took no threatening action against the cops, only resisted THEIR threatening acts. You have consistently argued his death was societys fault for 1) creating sin taxes and 2) empowering cops to enforce them: Fault=liability, so what are we debating? According to your OP, nothing: This outcome is better than "than indicting a bunch of idiot stormtroopers for following orders" (because being ordered to do something removes agency and accountability; that apply to clerks issuing gays marriage licenses and doctors/nurses performing abortions?) So what changed betweenthe OP and here?

Tamir Rice is totally innocent by virtue of being totally innocent: He did nothing wrong and the cops own video shows he made NO threatening movement, yet they opened fire so fast their squad car had not even stopped rolling. Then claimed they exited their vehicle and told Rice three times to raise his hands, only firing when they saw him reach into his waistband: Too bad NONE OF THAT BS ACTUALLY HAPPENED, as the cops own video shows. A 12-year-old can intentionally shoot someone, so his age would not automatically excuse him; his total innocence does. And yet: The murderers were acquitted, because they had badges.

Rodney Kings case has no conclusive evidence of why cops began beating him, but there is cause to believe he initiated it: But once a suspect is MOTIONLESS and UNCONSCIOUS, any threat he may have posed has ended, so clubbing him should too.

Trayvon Martin was stalked and attacked but "stood his ground," as was his legal right in that state: So overcoming that attacker, getting on top of him and repeatedly slamming his head into the ground would have been equally legal and lethal had that attacker not shot Martin first. BOTH were legally entitled to kill each other the MOMENT that fight began, WHOEVER started it (and Zimmerman pursued Martin long enough to call the cops, end that call, then call back later.) So EITHER backing down short of the others unconsciousness or death would have invited his own legally justified death. Maybe LAPD should have beaten King in FL, where irrelevancies like neutralizing an attackers threat creates no duty to cease beating him. Stand Your Ground Laws: Escalating trivial fist fights to Mortal Kombat since 2005.™

Michael Brown was unarmed, distant and fleeing, so I must disagree with the Ferguson and DoJ conclusions the cops claim to feel threatened cannot be disproven. If Brown reached into his car and grabbed his gun, sure, he was threatened then: But not when Brown FLED. Sorry, when someone exits their vehicle and PURSUES another, they cannot plausible claim to feel "threatened."

Murdering someones sleeping child is bad enough, but LITERALLY rubbing their face in their childs corpse and ARRESTING them adds grave insult to grave injury. I mean, gee, officer, since you arrested ME because YOU killed my daughter, will you at least bond me out long enough to bury her? If cops wanted to "calm" a situation their murder made confrontational, that was a poor means, and quite relevant because it is further evidence of their disregard and even contempt for the lives of the innocent public they are required and paid to "serve and protect."

For what it is worth, I share Kasichs (official) view of unions: "Unions that make things" are great, but public employees do not need a union for collective bargaining nor to hold their employer acountable: They already HAVE a ballot box to do those things; if that is not working, the solution is to make it work, not add a SECOND nonfunctional ballot box. Further, police union reactions to police shootings have been rather uniformly and awfully biased: Victims are presumed guilty until proven innocent, even though corpses can make no arguments.

All that said, police unions at least prevent local governments scapegoating individual officers for following official POLICY; "indicting a bunch of idiot stormtroopers for following orders." The stormtroopers are still responsible for ALL their own acts, ordered or otherwise, but those who gave the orders are no less so. In that respect, the judge who issued first warrant was only responsible (and only partially) for cops actions at the place for which that warrant was ISSUED—until s/he turned that warrant into a blank check by retroactively adding ANOTHER place to cover the cops murder. Had they robbed a donut shop on the way back to the station, would the judge add THAT to the warrant also?

That is just it: If the animals presented a threat, that would be one thing, but for about two decades (that I know of) there has been a broad policy of cops across the country shooting dogs on sight, not just vicious dobermans gaurding drug lord compounds, but poodles in the back seats of cars at traffic stops. It has gone from "knock, knock Do you know why I am stopping you tonight, sir?" to "BLAM, BLAM Do you know why I am stopping you tonight, sir?" And cops from a DIFFERENT JURISDICTION serving a warrant for a YET ANOTHER DIFFERENT JURISDICTION is illegal regardless: In their own town, they are law enforcement; in my moms, they were just another trespassing private citizen.

Not that towns ACTUAL cops are any better; one woman I knew there (who, ironically, lived in the OTHER cops' jurisdiction) used to complain about one of the local cops stalking her, hanging out sipping copy all night at the store where she worked, then tailgating her in his squad car all the way to her driveway. That would be creepy and threatening even if he did NOT have a badge and gun, but since he did....

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3) Cops serving a warrant blindly tossed a flash grenade without bothering to even LOOK where they were throwing it: The playpen of a one-year-old baby the cops nearly killed. A jury refused to indict them for any crime though, just as no cop nor anyone else is paying the $1 million medical fees to save the babys life and put his face and chest back together again. The family can probably afford it though; it is not as if they were only there in the first place because relatives took them in after they lost their own house in a fire. At least no one is "giving" them that $1 million and calling it justice, right?

Only ONE family was black, but does it MATTER which? Apparently, because only members of the respective victims races raised Hell about them. When victims are white conservatives scream, "TYRANNY!" but liberals are mute; when victims are black liberals scream "BRUTALITY!" but conservatives are mute (or worse, defend the latest Ruby Ridge.) We can all keep doing that until murderers with badges put every last one of us in nicely segregated cemetaries, but rather than dividing against each other to AID a common threat, unifying AGAINST it would make far more sense.

Those sleeping children and that family pet were surely "threats" though, and LETHAL ones, since ONLY lethal threats legally justify lethal force.

But the cops are really just weapons themselves. The people who bring it to bear are the ones who set out the laws and dictate a law enforcement response. If you are going to pass a law, you should consider the moral issue of whether or not the end you hope to achieve is worth killing people to obtain, because every confrontation between those who enact or enforce laws has the potential to become lethal. Thanks to human nature and the tragic limitations of human ability to foresight, there are GOING to be outlier cases where people die, no matter how you set up a system, and if you create a perfect law enforcement system that makes it impossible to kill citizens, you'll get cops killed, at which point actual enforcement efforts will tail off to nothing, and where is your law and order now? I took some sort of amateurish personality test in high school and again in college, that revealed I have a strong authoritarian personality. I believe in hierarchy and law and absolute right and wrong, but I keep coming around to limited government, because all I keep seeing is the degradation of those same principles of law and order and hierarchy, through excessive application, even without abuse or malfeasance or corruption.

This is why I accused you of being a Libertarian (as distinct from libertarian:) Because the heirarchy and authority of your stated preference is highly subjective and selective, which is the Libertarian Partys defining feature. One can usually get a good idea of a given Libertarians social, professional and economic qualities simply by reviewing what government services they classify as "TYRANNY!" and "necessary." Billionaire Libs like the Kochs probably consider even taxing to maintain the most minimal military oppressive: They can afford their OWN army, and do not need a corrupt, incompetent intrusive goverment dictating whom they can and cannot invade: TYRANNY11!1 Bushs "things would be a lot easier if this were a dictatorship—if I'm the dictator, heh...."

Yeah... see, THAT is why we do not allow dictators.

Returning from overly-personal tangent (no offense meant, ) there is an easy way to maintain law enforcement with niether cops NOR (other) citizens killed en masse: Lethal force is ONLY legal to resist lethal force. Simple easy rule; it works remarkably well for EVERYONE ELSE, so why should cops use a different standard? Because some people want anyone who steals their Mercedes shot? Sorry, vengeance=/=justice. John Adams' Boston Massacre summation covered this: For various reasons, criminal justice exists to protect the innocent, not punish the guilty, mainly because:

When innocence ceases to be a valid defense people do wtf they want, since cops kill them EITHER WAY, which ends all law, order and security.

It is not irresponsibilty, but selfish indifference to others, and that is literally in humanitys DNA, so even God will not remove it without removing that DNA. Conviction, confession, repentance, atonement, grace and salvation; great: Your flesh is still dying, as it should and must. The only TEMPORAL means of mitigating that is collective enlightened self-interest; each person insisting no other person abuses power over another, lest they tomorrow become its victim THEMSELVES. That is why warrants exist, and why the Fourth Amendment exists, and there is no problem with that: Even warrants do not empower anyone to shoot first and ask questions later.