Police around the U.S. are facing an angry backlash from the public after a series of police killings of unarmed African Americans, McClatchy Newspapers reports. Some in the law enforcement community say the incidents and the protests that followed are a wake-up call that should prompt soul-searching among officers and drive departments to revamp training. Many police think they're being stereotyped as racist and brutal. “The idea that police wake up, strap on their guns and pin on their badges and sit around thinking about how they're going to make lives miserable in the minority community – that's just at variance with common sense,” said James Pasco of the Fraternal Order of Police.
Officers and their families are concerned that antagonism toward police might make them targets of violence or retaliation, Pasco said. They also worry about identity theft and so-called doxxing, in which an individual's address and contact information are published online as a form of public shaming. Hackers threatened to release the names and Social Security numbers of police in Ferguson, Mo., where white officer Darren Wilson fatally