shrugs "Attacked" is "attacked," whatever unverifiable suspicions Zimmerman had for attacking.

As noted above, attacking someone invalidates all claims of "self-defense" regardless. Except in SYG states, where each party in any physical violence has the legal right to fight to the death even if they have already subdued their opponent(s,) if only because all have the same right, so leaving any opponent able to kill invites them to do so with legal impunity. Castle Doctrine is fine; there is no duty to retreat from ones private sanctuary, certainly not in ones underwear in the "dead" of night, leaving ones family to the dubious of unknown intruders. But SYG applies to public rather than private "arenas," and promotes escalation of simple assault to homicide when either flight or proportional response serves self-defense just as well with no liability. It is reckless endangerment BY a government abdicating its public safety duty.

A cop is also negligent in his duty if he kills anyone for any reason except to prevent imminent serious injury to others: Failing one sworn duty in no way justifies the "remedy" of failing an even GREATER sworn duty with far more serious consequences. Killing to protect property (or whatever motive inferior to saving lives) is unjustified because a human beings life is worth more than a TV (or, in this case, a pack of Phillies.) The Saudis may cut off theives' hands, but even they do not EXECUTE thieves, and this is why.

For the record, I agree Browns case is one where the initial narrative became increasingly dubious as more concrete facts were verified. That said, he know he WAS fleeing if only because he died MUCH farther from the cop than when the encounter began: It is implausible to believe the cop LEFT HIS VEHICLE to flee Brown or for any other self-defense purpose. Thus the only logical conclusion is that Brown fled, the cop followed firing more shots, Brown realized escape was impossible, and Brown then turned to face the cop in an effort to survive; what is unknown and unknowable is whether that effort was charging the cop to disarm him (i.e. whether Brown was literally too stupid to live) or surrender.

If the cops' disregard was for "emotions," they had no cause to restrain anyone based on the thing they were disregarding. What they disregarded in that case was HUMAN BEINGS, which is why they killed a sleeping child, ground the parents into the gory remains of their slain child while arresting them, blamed it all on a grandmothers (vain) effort to prevent cops killing an innocent child and even got a judge to retroactively sanction a police entry that was illegal in the first place. Seriously, you should be all over this: Cops burst into someone house with no warrant, immediately shot a sleeping child, arrested the parents for the crime of "being the parents of the kid we just murdered" and GOT AWAY WITH IT; if THAT is not government tyranny, nothing CAN be.

No doubt, but some doors need kicking as surely as others need to be un-kicked: Thus due process of law, and the solution to abuse of it is neither to condone that nor abolish law, but uphold its WHOLE, especially including laws against its abuse by those sworn to uphold it.

"Donut shop" was just a derogatorily stereotypical example (and thus an improper one on my part;) substitute the random private building of your choice. The point was the Fourth Amendment requirement warrants specify both places to be searched and the evidence sought categorically proscribes blank checks, and RETROACTIVE ones doubly so. Frankly, I think that judge should be impeached, because he violated the law, and in a very grave non-trivial way: Rather than upholding laws that protect the public safety, he sanctioned lethal harm to the public.

The problem is that they are the rule rather than exception in too many police forces. Not all, nor even (I believe) most, but ONE is too many. Again, this issue is properly front and center in the wheelhouse of everyone who affirms their own particular athority as absolute and inviolable yet all others as intolerable tyranny: How can anyone who considers even genuine government service OF the public "tyranny" simultaneously excuse genuine government supremacy OVER the public?

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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?

I keep coming back to the line in Terry Pratchett's "Jingo" where Sam Vimes, the police chief, in a conference about a sudden military issue that has arisen, in response to condescending remark about "civilians" says something like "A police officer IS a civilian, that's the point." Why do cops need more powers than mall cops? I agree with letting cops carry guns, but only because I agree with anyone carrying guns. Including some retarded people and felons (which, come to think of it, is not all that different from many cops I know). But last week, I was down the shore and noticed all the Class I & II special officers who were doing the bulk of the patrolling on the boardwalk at Seaside. In NJ a Class I can't even carry a gun, and a Class II is very limited in his jurisdiction, not being allowed to do much more than issue citations under title 39 (which is the motor vehicle code - so basically, he can write tickets). If such officers suffice to safeguard the facility which is pretty much the sine qua non of the local economy, and the most crowded and busy place on the Barnegat Peninsula, with the lowest class element of humanity, why do the rest of us need tactical operatives, who are armed like soldiers, without the discipline, training or command structure of soldiers?

Because NJ tourist traps are not representative of the US as a whole, nor even predominantly. Consider yourself blessed unarmed traffic cops suffice for most duties where you live; (at least) since I was a kid, police policy on Houstons Fifth Ward has been to respond to even MURDERS reported at night with "we'll send a hearse in the morning," because they do enter after sundown: Too badly outgunned and outnumbered. Pratchett is hardly an authoritative source on such matters, not because an author of humorous fiction (though that IS a good reason,) but because his countrys homicide rate equals Frances despite having HALF as many guns per capita.

Your loaded questions answer is, as intended, that no one needs anyone granted military weapons without comparable training, discipline and accountability, certainly not in conjunction with a symbolic shield that acts as a legal one. Yet it does not follow from that that all cops should be disarmed: Another (far better) option is to give most of them weapons and mandate comparable training, discipline and accountability. Statistics suggest MOST police forces do just that, and virtually all have adopted training in de-escalatory policies as a result, but a few forces confuse "proactively calming and securing" with "preemptively overwhelming and subduing." Consequently, most people are nervous when a cop pulls them over for a traffic stop, with the few exceptions restricted to those too naïve to realize police brutality is not the "black thang" both right AND left proclaim it.

Not really; one can be and many are self-destructively irresponsible.

I do not merely think, but know: Read the Constitution. Do you really need citation of all the otherwise unrelated historical examples of hypocrisy to understand why individual and collective authorities violating their own rules emphasizes rather than invalidates the merits of those rules? Is so, postpone the Constitution and re-read the Catholic Churchs history (one must admire the de Medicis pragmatic efficiency: Why buy individual popes when it is so much easier, cheaper and lasting to simply buy the OFFICE?. )