“The way I’ve been trained to shoot the chest or the head, I was going to go for the head shot, but then I decided, ‘No, I don’t want to take this guy’s life’, so I shot him in the shoulder” (story, March 9). How incredibly refreshing to read Trevor Whitney’s thought processes while under threat from a man breaking into his home. A Marine Corp veteran, he reacted instantly because of his military training, but then actually thought about the humanity of the man confronting him, and decided not to shoot to kill. Whitney is my idea of a hero.

One expects untrained, self-appointed vigilantes packing weapons to react without thought in their moment of buck fever, perhaps killing innocent people, but one does not expect supposedly well-trained police to react that way.

How is police force training different from that of military troops’ training? What makes some cops react like a gun-nut when responding to an incident and confronting unarmed children, adults or the mentally ill?

Is their training that inadequate? Guessing by the frequency of police killings of the innocent, it is.

One aspect of that deficient training is the racial profiling that makes confrontations with unarmed blacks sometimes instantaneously lethal — much different from all the efforts police expend to disarm whites waving weapons.

Politicians need to fund, then demand, more intensive preparation for police to give them Whitney’s level of skill to stop crime while saving lives.

The police force deserves the practice and virtual experience.

Richard Fochtmann, Leeds

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