So let me restate -- 12 million arrests a year, 400 fatal shootings, many of them justified.
Splutter.
Many of them justified?
Many of them justified? And then he just goes on with his argument?
Sheesh!
A digression, in blue so that you can easily skip it if you want:
In my industry, there's a kind of software we call a "coverage tool." You start it up, and then run your automated tests, and it shows you how much of your production code is exercised by those tests. Generally, code that is tested turns green, and code that is untested turns red.
Some developers use tools like this to tell whether or not they have more automated tests to write. A lot of red code is bad, less red code is better, and they write more tests until there's little enough red code to satisfy some established metric, then check the code in.
Not me, though, and not developers of my ilk. We test-drive--which is to say, we write the automated tests first, before we write the code they exercise, and then we run those tests and watch them fail. Only then, we discipline ourselves, are we permitted to write any production code at all, and only enough production code to make the new tests pass. The slogan is, "Never write a single line of production code that hasn't been demanded into existence by a failing test."
When we use coverage tools, it's in an entirely different context. If I run a coverage tool on code I'm ready to check in and see any red at all, it doesn't mean I have a couple more tests to write before I'm done. It means that, despite my beliefs to the contrary, I'm not actually a test-driven developer yet, I have been dishonestly representing myself as something I'm not, I have some serious and fundamental work to do on my mindset, my discipline, and my professionalism, and I really ought to lose my job.Now back to the point.
O'Reilly is implying that a situation where a cop commits unjustified fatal shootings is unfortunate, and a situation where he commits fewer is less unfortunate.
That is not the case, and anyone who swallows that without choking has sustained some profound moral corrosion from the Zeitgeist.
Someone who commits
even one unjustified fatal shooting is not a cop, he's a murderer. That's what "unjustified" means. He should not simply strive to do better in the future. He should not simply be put on administrative leave. He should not simply be reprimanded. He should not simply be fired. He should be arrested, tried, convicted, and incarcerated at the very least, but preferably punished directly by the family of the victim in whatever way seems right to them.
It frightens me that few enough people understand this these days that a screed like that can even be broadcast on television without making sponsors scatter in fear, and then praised in a forum like this. We truly have lost something important in this country.
