This reads like a puff-piece explaining away police violence. But perhaps we should get used to reading about civic violence in the US, both on the part of the police and from marginalised communities.
The wars of the last two decades are coming home to roost. Excess armour is being given or sold at knock-down prices by the Pentagon to police forces across the US. The police themselves are often military personnel returning from overseas deployment. They are now being sent to Israel for advanced training in the 'art' of civic control. The mentality is 'us' and 'them'.
And the communities they police? Marginalised, poverty stricken, poorly educated and awash in feelings of being trapped in a world not of their making and without access to an exit from a life lived with no horizon, except ironically by joining the military.
As I said earlier: We should probably get use to reading about excessive civic violence coming out of the US. All those blacks are America's Palestinians, and they and their communities will be hammered with the same disproportionate force we see coming out of Israel.
Welcome to Frankenstate, North America, fast becoming a clone of its own creation of Frankenstate, The Levant.

Yep, Halduell, you're absolutely right, except for everything you've written.

The perp was a giant thug. He charged the police officer, who fired in self defence. And he had earlier taken cigars from a shop without paying.

Save your bleeding little heart for something better than "marginalised communities".

Where was all the protests when a few months ago a young white Australian male was shot in the back whilst walking along a street in the USA. I believe his attackers were mostly black.

Ozzie, you obviously don't understand the psyche of the negro in the southern states particularly, otherwise you would not ask the question.
Go back and read Halduell.

David

...Those with the power in society to change the spaces between the diametrics of good and evil therein, lay captured in the lost world of self interest. These are a political class so entrenched in maintaining the status quo for the wealthy (of which they be all too often, the representatives from the class exhibiting the worst excesses)!

...Halduell's simple exposé captures but the outcome of those rejected by the system: The power of the increasing numbers of outcasts, is to simply self destruct!

It's not a race thing anyway, cops in the U.S have a shocking record of killing unarmed people, truth be told most of the victims of police brutality are probably White, like Danielle Willard:
http://www.facebook.com/JusticeForDanielleWillard
Or Dillon Taylor:
http://www.sltrib.com/sltrib/news/58304981-78/police-taylor-lake-salt.html.csp
Or Todd Blair (warning, distressing footage)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WV6Bq8xeQrU
Salt Lake City Utah is mostly White, so most of the victims of Police brutality will be White also, Ferguson Missouri is mostly Black so most of the victims will be Black.