At a minimum, watch 100 videos. I did last night, only took about an hour, it's easy to find some to nitpick, some which are ambiguous ... and plenty that are totally horrifying.
If you can watch 100 videos in a row from Greg Doucette's list and say, "the militarization and use of force tactics of US law enforcement are not a problem" then I'd like to hear why you think so given this evidence.
Otherwise you're not speaking from an honest grappling with what these videos contain.
Almost all of them had outright wrong, or heavily misleading titles and/or descriptions with contradictory claims in the comments - and almost none of them provided context to the police actions.
This list is really more about stoking emotions than providing evidence of anything.
I mean look at this one...
https://twitter.com/jayjanner/status/1267111893753307137
A large volume of misleading hyperbolic claims by a biased collector/poster don't get more meaningful through volume of posts.
Are there instances where police abuse their power? Yes. Absolutely. But it doesn't help anyone when people are cherry picking instances where escalation of force was warranted, but they do not show the full context leading up to that escalation.
I would like to see meaningful police reform as much as anyone else. But we need to be pragmatic about any examples we cite as "abuse of force". Let's create a list of absolutely cut-and-dry instances of police brutality, then move from there.
Second, why shoot to kill and not to incapacitate? Shoot to kill is a policy. Why is that a policy?
The police rule by fear. I’ve never broken the law and yet Im really affraid of cops in the US. I know I should not have a reason to but can’t help but be intimidated by their tactics, their orders, their demeanour. And I act like a scared ghost anytime I get stopped by them: I am afraid that if any answer I’d give them might make them punish me with one more more tickets.
I just want to answer your question about shooting to kill vs incapacitate.
The first part of the answer is that nobody should shoot anyone who they don’t reasonably believe is trying to kill them. This applies to citizens or police. Generally it is the standard applied in citizen self-defense scenarios.
The second part is that shooting isn’t that easy or effective. Certainly not how it appears in the movies. It is hard to hit a 6” moving target in a stressful situation, even at relatively close range, and would require training and practice that simply isn’t available to cops. Added to this, there is no reliable place to shoot someone that will incapacitate them without also being likely to kill them. Surprisingly many people will continue to fight after being shot, so even if the cop had the ability to ‘shoot them in the leg’, for example, they would still be at risk of being killed by an aggressive adversary.
In addition, any responsible use of firearms has to take into account the environment. Handgun bullets are still lethal hundreds of meters from where they are fired. When cops miss their targets, bullets can and do kill bystanders, or ricochet or fragment and cause injury to people not even in the line of fire.
So the guidance to anyone using a gun in self defense is generally to shoot for the ‘center of mass’. This is primary because hitting the central nervous system or vital organs is the only reliable way to stop someone, but also because it’s impractical and unsafe to aim anywhere else.
None of this is meant to justify police shootings. Quite the opposite. I am just explaining why every gun use is necessarily a lethal encounter.
If a politician suggests “shooting them in the leg”, the one thing you can be certain of is that they are completely incompetent on this topic, and can not be trusted to improve matters.
Generally agree apart from this - if cops don't have training to be expert (or at least above-average good) shooters, then that's a failure. We've read tons of articles about militarization of US police. If they have budget for armored vehicles, for sure they have budget for (very cheap but quality basic) 9mm ammunition for practice.
Even the best handgun shooters in the world are unlikely either to be reliably be able to shoot to incapacitate.
It just isn’t a capacity that handguns have in realistic use cases.
The primary reason police need more training with firearms is so that they become less afraid of them and more generally competent and confident.
That will give them more capacity to exercise better judgement in when they actually need to shoot.
Of course it depends a lot on the training and whether it is aimed at increasing or reducing their fear levels.