Again. It’s so often that one gesture that gets people killed by cops. This time, it was a “swatting” incident in Kansas City, in which the victim was absolutely innocent of any wrongdoing.

Officers screamed at Finch to put his hands in the air, but Livingston said the 28-year-old father of two young boys moved a hand toward his waistband. An officer, fearing Finch was reaching for a gun, fired a single shot. Finch died minutes later.

It bothers me, because that is such a low bar for execution by a police officer. Visualize your hands and your “waistband” area, and how the two occupy the same region of space. If your hands are at your sides and you try to raise them above your head, they will pass by your waistband. And that sounds to me like what happened to Andrew Finch in Kansas City earlier this week.

We have to set higher standards for police behavior and accountability in this country. We have to, if not disarm the police, at least scale back the lethality of their weaponry. Take away their tanks and automatic weapons. I know it’s an ancient chestnut, but British police really do go mostly unarmed and they kill far fewer people, and are themselves killed far less often. Violence begets violence, ya think?

And above all else, radically change their training. We have this myth that police officers are expected to risk their lives to protect us, but in reality, they’re trained to protect their own skins above all else. Thus we have the “23(?) foot rule”, which says that if your gun is holstered and an assailant gets within 23 feet of you, you’re toast; so shoot first if anybody makes a threatening gesture in your vicinity. In this instance, if they see a hand go near the “waistband” area, look real hard and get ready, but do not shoot until you see a weapon. Yep, once in a while a cop will be outdrawn, like a Wild West gunfight. So be it–our cops don’t shoot first. The hard truth is that justice demands that a police officer accept a few risks to avoid committing a terrible injustice. That’s what we pay them for.

And accountability. It’s bad enough that it’s a cold day in hell when a cop is convicted of manslaughter or murder. But cops fired for misbehavior on one force seem to have no trouble getting hired on at another force. If there’s a shortage of qualified (non-murderous) cops, then we should address that, not lower the hiring standards.

End rant.