I doubt that little, if any such training had been given these men. Our police across the nation have been militarized. They act more like an occupying force than a community service. More compassionate outreach training has been overshadowed or abandoned entirely.

While I don't believe defunding the police is the right course, I fully believe that we should all demand police training should be more protracted and more focused on psychological and emotional outreach. Cops should have to go through at least as much training as full paramedics at a qualified community college or university. My son, in his first year of training for his EMT apprenticeship to be a paramedic, has received more compassionate outreach training than the cops in that class (looking to transition from policing to EMS) said they'd ever received in police training.

Cops should be required to take ongoing training in psychology and deescalation for at least as many hours a year as they spend on the firing range training to be more efficient killers.