Okay, this is good one to finish the night off with. Because it's gonna go over like a lead balloon.
I don't know if I'd call this "advice" so much as a thought experiment-- but it occurs to me that cops (from whatever jurisdiction) can afford to be pretty blase about killing us civilians because they are so rarely held to any serious account. Put simply, they don't pay much of a price for murder.
Suppose they did?
It's well-known among the game-theory crowd that the most effective long-term strategy is simple tit-for-tat: give the other payer the benefit of the doubt in transactions until the other player screws you, then screw them back. It's the Old Testament edict of an eye for an eye, but with SCIENCE!
Apply that to Ferguson. Hell, apply it to Toronto or Vancouver. Suppose that every time a cop killed one of us, one of us killed a cop. Not
the
cop, not the shooter, but some other cop, at random. Suddenly, all their shouting about "due process" (which never seems to apply when they're gunning kids down in the street, but which always seems to get raised at strident deciblage when the next-of-kin have the temerity to get outraged
at said shooting) means nothing. Suddenly, every time one of yours kills one of ours, you
could be next.
The ol' Blue Wall of Silence might crumble pretty fast when every time your partner kills someone,
you
might have to pay with your life. In a world of optimal tit-for-tat, unthinking loyalty to the badge isn't the thing that keeps you unaccountable: it's the thing that could get you killed. Why, the police might even start policing themselves
faced with such a prospect.
Of course it's not fair. You're denying due process. You're killing an innocent human being who, in all likelihood, had nothing to do with the murder you're reacting to. (You have to: the actual shooter will be too well-protected.) It's not justice-- but then, it's not meant to be. And it's not like we have any kind of justice
now.
Sure, it's a revenge fantasy. But it's more than that. It's operant conditioning.
And if we scrupulously abided by the algorithm, I'd say the odds are good it would save lives in the long run.
Good night.