Police: Man who ran at officers with a loaded gun after they heard him firing it is arrested in South Boston

The criminal complied with the police officers' orders and he's alive to face charges.

and I'll keep saying it (without wanting to tempt fate):

This guy would have been dead in many or most other jurisdictions. The better training, better wages and better other things that we insist upon for police in Massachusetts has paid off again.

what else?

So can't answer that.
You know more about murderous conflict than any of us I'd guess. Curious, do you feel you are in a conflict or battle? Where is the pressure coming from and who would you like to see acknowledge your points?

for engaging this in good faith. Most folks only listen to what they want to hear. And it's 7:30 AM and I'm feeling chatty, so sure, I'll try to explain.

First, "BLM" isn't an atomic thing. It's an organization, with some spokespeople but mostly with a bunch of loosely-organized member groups whose membership ebbs and flows. And the leadership has indeed come out in praise of individual police department actions. (Most recently here, and I'll bet you a Galway chicken dinner that you hear similar reporting in Boston in the next 48 hours) Individual members are also not all staunchly anti-police. I'm not active in the organization, though I'm obviously sympathetic, and you can dig through my comment history if you want to verify that even though I'm UHub's resident anti-cop-crank, there have been a few times in the last year or two that I've come out and said "That was really well-handled" when the BPD successfully de-escalated a violent situation that would have ended in death somewhere else.

Wouldn't this be a GREAT example of how complying with police orders and better trained officers were able to take a potentially catastrophic and deadly encounter and turn into a commendable arrest where no one was hurt? Shouldn't they be tweeting and sharing this story so people nationwide see it as a model? But they never seem to do so.

So, here's where we start to run into problems. I get what you're trying to say: this was a positive example of the department using its superior training and know-how to turn a situation that could have easily become violent into a peaceful arrest. And you'll get no argument from me--it was a great job, and other departments should strive to emulate it. But I'm curious about how you've worded it. "a great example of how complying with police orders... turn[ed] into a commendable arrest where no one was hurt." "Complying with lawful orders" has become a loaded term, because it has been used so many times to defend police actions that were clearly not defensible. In the past week alone, we've seen:

• A man who told an officer at a traffic stop that he was legally armed, followed the script law enforcement has established for gunowners, and was summarily executed when he reached for his wallet
• Another legally armed man at the Dallas shooting, whose first move when the shooting started was to hand his weapon to the nearest police officer and say "please hold onto this so it doesn't look like I'm involved in this shooting." The Dallas PD thanked him for his efforts by posting his image on Twitter as a suspect.

You're probably wondering what this has to do with your question, when the spirit of your statement (to you) is clear, so I want to spell this out as carefully as I can: there is a growing sense, particularly among minority populations, that the police are not acting as a legitimate law enforcement agency, but have positioned themselves as another armed street gang. T-Nehisi Coates wrote a really good breakdown of this for the Atlantic this week; I'd encourage you to read it. So when police officers (even when they mean well! I'm not casting some backhand aspersion on you!) use language like this, it causes distrust and fear in vulnerable populations who have seen the same language used by actual-jackbooted-thugs-in-uniform. We're judged by the company we keep, etc. etc. (FWIW, there are absolutely folks who take this to absurd lengths on the other side of the argument, too. I have Facebook friends who I've had to unfollow because posting "it's not enough!" after every thing to BPD does right is just noise that hurts the underlying cause) It turns what should be a positive, teachable moment into a tense misunderstanding between two groups that are talking totally different languages.

So, the answer as always is "it's complicated." I agree that the BPD is one of the best agencies in the country when it comes to resolving armed conflicts peacefully. I'd like to see their approach emulated elsewhere. But it also makes me sad that we have to call out every instance of "the police didn't kill this suspect, even though they probably wouldn't been legally culpable for his death" as a positive. It should be the expectation of every encounter. And that's what BLM is trying to say.

Anyway, I'd be happy to talk further about this, but I'm going to step away from the thread for a bit, because there will be of course be 12 responses to this by bosguy and DPM about what a terrible human being I am and how all those dead black guys had it coming to them. But I really do value talking to people earnestly about this, so thanks for engaging in good faith.