All of these situations are horrible and it sounds like all of the police involved acted cowardly, but I'm not sure how you can only hire courageous people. There's literally no way to know until it's too late sometimes.These things are important, but also important is addressing the unbelievable degree of cowardice we tolerate in our police officers today. If you’re so afraid of danger that you’re a danger to those around you, you have no business in any kind of dangerous job and should consider going to work in some nice comfy office somewhere. Physical courage isn’t the greatest virtue, but it is a virtue all the same.
Of course a police officer should be "courageous," but how do you test for that? How can someone know how they would react in certain situations? We would all like to think that we'd never shoot at a 13 year old, but if we thought that he was carrying a real gun and after being told to drop it etc, turned towards us with it... -Point is, you never know until you test your mettle, what sort of courage you have.