This past week has been very upsetting. Sterling and Castile were two other men who were murdered. To be frank, these instances- just like many others- could have been prevented. If we are being true to ourselves, this is not the fault of the department that employed them, the people who trained them, or their parents who raised them. This is our fault. At some point we must ask ourselves, "How many people have to die by officers who are bad, racist, improperly trained, and the like before it's an issue?"

I think all of us have watched as much as we could of the Sterling and Castile shootings and aftermath. After I watched all that I could, here is what is more upsetting about the two videos:

For Sterling:

If you look at Sterling's shoulder, when the officer tells him to not reach for it, his shoulder moves in a retractive motion which would move the arm away from the "gun" (it was so small when the officer took it out that if it was a gun- assuming he was reaching for it- it was a small pistol).

The officer on the left covers Sterling from the fire of the officer on the right two bullets in which means he instinctually thought that the other officer was in the wrong and needed to protect Sterling.

After doing so, the officer on the left actually brings out his gun and points it at the man who has had five bullets in him, after trying to protect Sterling, and was now so "trigger-happy" that after he has had five bullets to the chest while he was on the ground, he felt the need to protect himself from the very same man due to so much adrenaline and lack of self-control.

For Castile:

Let's assume he was reaching for a gun.

His seat belt is still on with his being shot. This means he could have not been attempting to attack the police officer by getting out of the car, and you obviously aren't going to stick your face or arms out of the window with a gun in your face if you'll be pulled back by a seat belt.

Assuming the police officer did feel the need to protect himself, his timbre and tone sound sorrowful, frustrated, and scared. Whether or not he was in the right, these feelings being verbally heard are proving he did not want to shoot him.

Acknowledging the fact that he says to keep her hands in the same place while she is clearly videotaping while he is aiming his gun at the obviously lifeless body of Castile, he is showing signs of potential trauma in regards to what he said to what he feels was his accidental victim.

These previous two statements show that he did not want to kill this man, nor did he want to shoot him. The reason why this is important is because it means either his training taught him to shoot-to-kill since protocol is supposed to be to aim for the stomach (no major organs) and he was aiming through a window of a car which would not give him access to the stomach unless he came near the suspected, soon-to-be shooter, Castile, or he had a lack of training that did not teach him this. This specific incident is almost completely mirroring that of the CO from OITNB where he was scared and didn't know what to do, so he killed an inmate who was just trying to help restrain another inmate that was roughly 3/4 his size due to lack of training.

Part of the job of the police is protecting innocent citizens in crossfire. Assuming the woman was confrontational, the fact is that there was a four-year-old in the range of the bullets by being in the back, nearly parallel to Castile. He could have killed her. This is again, showing that we are training them improperly, or not enough.

These two incidents in 24 hours are only furthering the confirmation of the notion that if police trainings are not superb in places like Richmond, where there have been 0 police-related deaths in the past seven years in what was one of the most violent cities, as well as my own town. Even with multiple situations of resisting arrest and assaulting police officers (with myself included nearly 20 times, as far as detaining goes, and two times with arrests, one specifically being for a violent crime and not one gun, tasor, pepper spray, or even baton pulled on me), then they will be polarized in having either militarized training, improper training, or not enough training.

My town's police department has killed 0 people since 1998. That woman had a rifle and actually pulled the trigger. The only other two times in the past 26 years at least were when the officers opened fire when they shot at a tire on a high speed case and were being swerved into, and the second was when a woman was being dragged by a man on 74th street while the suspect was in a vehicle- he was still only shot in the shoulder.

When we trust officers with the death penalty without due process (because from a legal aspect, that's what shoot-to-kill is) we expect that they should be held to higher standards because an accident due to lack of training or improper training clearly killed these two men.

Things such as body cams are there, not because we don't trust police, but to make sure that we don't have videos like Castile's that would only be able to be accessed if the FBI forced Facebook into showing it if they did delete the video. If they didn't (because there might not be one), we have proof that the officer was justified from their perspective rather than a bad phone recording. Not only that, but it can show us for future departments and policemen how to avoid the same results in the same situations.

Things like proper training would be there because obviously police are going to have to sometimes kill, but shooting in a car with a four-year-old in the back put that child's life in danger. Proper training could have allowed for better assessment which would have not had the (potential) average officer to fire those shots with the detained person still in the same vehicle as the innocent little girl.

There are certain things we can't avoid with death in law enforcement, but these could have been. There is a way to train shoot-to-maim, rather than shoot-to-kill. We just don't want to do it because then we have to admit that we have been needlessly killing people for decades, regardless of race.

Our selfishness in refusing to admit that we have been needlessly killing people is what is causing more husbands and wives, mothers and fathers, sisters and brothers, and sons and daughters to die every year.

Five hundred and fifty-seven weren't enough graves for Alton to not die from improper training.

Five hundred and fifty-eight weren't enough caskets for Castile to not die from improper training.

Is 600 enough for us to change training?

What about 1,000?

How many family members have to die before training is an issue, America?