Montreal Police

On October 14, 2007, Robert Dziekanski was killed by the RCMP at Vancouver airport.  I was reminded of his case, when Patrick Limoges and Mario Hamel were gunned down in  downtown Montreal on Tuesday morning.  Limoges was a St-Luc Hospital employee, who was killed by a stray police bullet.  His case is another sign that police officers need more training and they need to be made accountable for their actions.
The policemen in Dziekanski's case overreacted and were not punished for their actions.  The officers involved in Limoges's death also showed a lack of judgment, or possibly training and only time will tell whether or not there will pay for their negligence.  However, it doesn't look good, as excuses are already being made by Public Security Minister Robert Dutil, who said they probably didn't have Tasers.
Here's where things get a little fuzzy for me.  The officers are chasing and shooting at a man with a knife in downtown Montreal.  Really?  Shooting off your gun in downtown Montreal?  That makes a lot of sense... There are several officers.  A homeless man, Mario Hamel, only has a knife.  Sounds like the old saying about bringing a knife to a gun fight.  The poor officers were at such a disadvantage here...  How far away were the police so that they missed him and hit Limoges?  I guess learning how to use a gun is not part of the training.  If they were far away, was using a gun really necessary?  If they were close, why did they miss?  Was he threatening someone with the knife?  Was someone's life in immediate danger and that justified the use of a firearm?  Even if no one had a Taser, couldn't one of the officers get close enough to hit Hamel in the leg, in his arm?  Are the officers trained only to kill?
Gunning down a man with a knife is the same as Tasering a man with a stapler.  It's a sign of stupidity, incompetence and improper training.  Assuming these officers were not armed with a Taser, I'm sure they had batons available.  I have no proper combat training, but give me and three friends batons and I'm sure we could take down a homeless man with a knife.  How hard can it be?
Police officers are supposedly putting their lives on the line for us, but that's rarely true.  In most cases they just go for the easy way out and their jobs are nowhere near as dangerous as many others out there.  Construction workers, fishermen, loggers, miners and many others have much more dangerous jobs than cops and face death more frequently, but no one considers them heroes.  Police officers are not even ranked in the top 10 of the most dangerous jobs.  http://finance.yahoo.com/career-work/article/110394/americas-10-most-dangerous-jobs
Why then are they not made accountable for their mistakes?  Why do they get away with things regular people wouldn't?  Is their incompetence due to a lack of education?  Then change their training program.  It's not fair that they can kill a man and not have to pay for it.  The system needs to change.  The police have too much power and someone needs to start policing them.  Enough is enough.

Also, enough ranting.