You can see by the picture just how much he enjoyed killing that man. Why he’s positively exulting in it.

Knuckledraggers: exult.

We’re not going to get on a rant with this one. We just figured it would be a good chance to humanize the men and women On The Job (tens of thousands of whom are current or former military). Very few people actually enjoy putting someone down, and while they definitely have their place (especially outside the wire), they’re certainly not the norm. If we’d been on the scene, we could have told Officer Morrison platitudes to try to make him feel better. We could repeat the fact that his actions were entirely predicated on Suspect Ramirez’s actions. We could’ve reminded him the shooting was legal, justified, ethical, morally correct and contextually understandable.

None of that would have changed his emotional response, and that’s a Good Thing. This isn’t the first post OIS response like this we’ve seen, but it’s the first one we’ve seen captured on video.

We’re glad this young officer survived the encounter intact and regret the necessity of putting Ramirez down. We hope this glimpse at what happened helps humanize things – use it as a filter next time you hear an officer had to kill someone. Doesn’t mean you don’t look at every shooting critically, clinically and in context, and call out wrongdoing when you see it, but remember Morrison as you do so. It might help you direct your outrage toward the LEOs who deserve it and pollute things for the rest rather than the entire career field. Those are the ones with whom we should be ruthless.