I try to avoid watching too many "cops behaving badly" videos, since they generally just make me feel angry and hopeless. But I stumbled across this one this morning and it fascinated me.
(Skip ahead to about 7:40 to get to the cop-cam footage of the chase and shootout.)
First, we'll start with the obvious. The suspects were apparently firing from their moving vehicle at the cop's car. This is pretty dumb, since hitting a moving target when shooting is difficult, but hitting a moving target while you yourself are moving is exponentially so. Shooting like this was stupid and dangerous and it doesn't take a gun nut to realize they had little chance of actually hitting and stopping the officer.
So when the orc eventually pulls his sidearm and starts shooting an entire magazine of rounds back, holding the pistol with one hand and the steering wheel with another, while driving through a residential area… my jaw dropped. Wow, did this guy think he was in a movie or something?
But what's surprising about this behavior even more is that this isn't a cops-behaving-badly video! It's from a press briefing! The cops were putting this behavior on display of their exemplary service to the community, not trying to bury it!
You know, I can't believe it when a cop says something like "I hope I never have to use my gun. I hope I never have to shoot someone." Oh, please. If you're so worried about that, don't carry a gun at all, then; then you'll never have to risk shooting someone. No, I truly believe that orcs live for the thrill of being able to get in a gunfight like this; to be able to take someone's life (if you watch the briefing before the cop-cam video, Baldy mentions that one of the suspects died and was "booked in absentia," whatever the hell that means) and be badged a hero for it. It's a primal instinct in men right? Especially in the types of men who take up arms against their fellow man in the name of the state.
I live in a neighborhood not that different from the one in the video, and I sincerely hope there's not an officer on my city's force crazy enough to drive through it shooting through his windshield like the '80s action movie star in this video. I'm pretty sure that all of them would do this sort of thing, though, and it depresses me.