As I write this, I'm looking at a selection of news stories and talking with my friend Hanna, who lives in Finland, about them.

One of those stories tells of the police shooting of former Cincinnati Bengals running back David "Deacon" Turner.  Turner was walking out of a convenience store with a bag of alcohol, accompanied by his 19 year old son and a 16 year old male.  The police attempted to detain Turner for reasons not yet detailed in public reports, and there was a struggle in which Turner - possibly by accident, we don't know for sure yet - struck an officer in the back of the head with the bag of beer.

The officer shot him.

Twice.

And killed him.

Contrast this with a similar situation in Finland that also happened this same day (the link for this story has expired and it was in Finnish anyway, sorry).  A drunk young man with a puukko (a small knife commonly carried by Finns, although illegally) was swinging it at a police officer, who used a taser to subdue him...and the most common discussion in Finland was whether the police really *needed* to use the taser, rather than talking him down.

It has been my experience in life that unless you are dealing with someone who is truly deranged, anger and aggression are almost invariably the byproducts of fear.  Sometimes that fear is misplaced and sometimes that fear is well-placed.  When you are afraid and cannot run, you fight.  This is a fundamental human behavior, "fight or flight."  The fight may be only angry words, or it may be violent behavior, but it is a fight regardless.

Whether it is a frightened animal, an insecure lover, or an angry criminal, the first and best response is always to try to calm them and move them away from anger.  This is always a difficult thing - the frightened animal may try to bite, which scares you and makes you angry.  The insecure lover may say things that cut and hurt, and this causes fear that your love has gone sour, and you become angry.  The criminal may fear being imprisoned or mistreated because they are from a culture in which being arrested means a brutal beating and terrible mistreatment. 

Finnish police are trained to respond *without fear* to the greatest extent possible, because they know that fear will make them irrational and angry, and at that point they are no longer police but vigilantes. 

Most of our police don't understand that - most of our CULTURE doesn't understand that, and that is why there is the constant escalation of behavior.  This week a man attacks with a knife and is shot, next week the man who attacks is carrying a gun and shoots back, next week the man who may or may not be carrying a gun is faced with a dozen nervous cops wearing bullet-proof armor and every one of them with a loaded, fire-ready weapon pointed at the man...and then the man feels he has no hope and no escape, so he either foolishly attacks, or takes his own life, which amounts to the same thing.

David Turner didn't die because he was violent or aggressive.  He died because we live in a country where "fight fire with more fire" is the operating mentality.  He died because in our culture we have lost our ability to separate emotion from behavior.  He died because how dare he struggle with police.

He was shot and killed because we live in a country where refusal to cooperate with authority is always seen as aggression...and aggression is always met with more aggression. 

We're okay with that.

We shouldn't be. 

Our entire culture has declined to an us-against-them standoff between the government, military, and police versus free citizens.  We don't rehabilitate our criminals - we treat them like animals, and we have more of them as a percentage of our population than any other nation.  Police have become terrifially paranoid and aggressive, even a simple traffic stop often includes an officer preparing their weapon to fire...because we have escalated aggression so far that these days it's not a safe bet that a citizen in a traffic stop *won't* do something stupid and aggressive.

The more violent and aggressive the police become, the more fearful and aggressive the people become.  Then the police use the increased fear and aggression among the people to push for license to be even MORE violent and aggressive, and the cycle of escalation continues until the phrase "police state" is no longer hyperbole but sad and frightening reality.

We MUST change the way we think in this country.  The answers are not in violence and aggression, nor in fear and apprehension.  We will not solve our criminal problem by continually sweeping ever-greater percentages of our population into prisons.  That only creates more criminals and more hostility towards "the system."

It has to start with you and me.  It has to start with each of us placing social pressure on those among us who resort to escalation against "the system," and encouraging them to instead work to correct "the system."

Our answers will never lie in force and violence.  They lie in love, respect, and dignity.  They lie in recognizing that force - of any kind - is a LAST resort, not a first one.  They lie in education and in dialogue.

The answers lie in getting back to the simple recognition that we are all human, and we all want the same things in life.  They lie in teaching ourselves again to avoid wrongdoing not because we'll go to jail and not because we'll go to hell, but *because it is wrong.*  Not "against the law," but *wrong."

Each of us, every day, has many opportunities to choose between love and fear.  We can buy bigger guns, bar our windows, give the police ever-greater permission to act aggressively...or we can put our guns down, open our hearts, and insist that our police and our court systems stop treating us as though any  lapse of judgement is evidence that we are beyond redemption.

WE are the government.  WE are the system.  It is up to us to change it...if we destroy it, are only we destroying ourselves.