I've been thinking about those "Get your officers used to shooting kids

and pregnant women and old people so they won't hesitate" targets, and the really bad attitude they seem to feed into.

In comments on her post, Tam has
As far as the value of the targets goes, however, I think that it's a banana peel on a roller skate at the top of a 10W40-covered slope. Statistically-speaking, the odds of that toddler pointing a gun at you, versus a cap gun or a finger or a chicken finger, are miniscule. I'd rather err on the side of caution when it comes to building in conditioned responses.

This ties into the officer-safety movement that has conditioned some cops in urban areas to scream "GUN!!!1!!!eleventy!" at the sight of a heater, even if, when the echoes die down, that heater turns out to have been holstered.

Well, thinking back to when I was a teenager(about 16 as I recall) I got to sit in on a shoot/don't shoot training session, back when it was a slide projector and cap guns, run by a OHP trooper.  This was for a school class that had him in for a talk, and he was using the same slides they used in their academy; some of the pictures were the same person as in a previous, but in one they were holding a gun, in others a phone or something else. In some with a gun it was pointed at you, in others simply in their hand, pointing at the floor. The WHOLE FREAKIN' IDEA was 'LOOK at what's in front of you, is it an actual threat or not? Is it a threat that demands you shoot NOW, or be ready to if you have to?'

As Tam said, this seems to be aimed at eliminating that trained-in thought process and going straight to 'Kill them'. And that is a big damn problem.

Especially when you add in the huge use of ninja-suiters for crap they shouldn't be used for and the apparent lack of concern on their part for making sure they have the right damned address before they start kicking doors and shooting dogs.  For that matter, the lack of concern on the part of some officers requesting the warrant for making sure that, say, it's actually a good tip and the information is accurate.  Take the attitude behind this mess, throw in 'don't hesitate to shoot anything you see as a threat' attitude and it's bad.  REAL bad.