A police officer is human just like any other person so killing one of them is no better or worse than killing a person.

Obviously for a politician the killing of a police officer is eminantly exploitable and can yield a good deal of favour among the police "service" which can be turned into political good fortune. For a media worker the killing of a police officer is equally exploitable as so many bottom feeding politicians will be attempting to exploit it. This means a running story that has legs, which can be turned toward higher profits for newspaper sales and web hits.

So if money is all you care about then yes, the killing of a police officer is far more important than a "normal" person.

If you are not only human, but are also sane and not governed by money...then a police officer is just a person who made a stupid career choice. His or her death is of no more concern than any other death.

More things to consider?

If police in (normal) carrying out of their duties are getting killed, would that not make them less likely to take so many chances? So might society not want to impose stiffer sanctions to prevent that?

Understand the full range of what I just said and do NOT interpret "take less chances" to necessarily mean ducking the job. It also includes firing back in spite of the proximity of bystanders. It also includes not bothering to consider trying to talk down a distraught person who is raving and waving a gun around or tackling a person coming at them with a knife by using just their baton.

"Yes I am aware of peple who have been hit by the police, myself included. I do not know anybody who was killed by the police but of course I am aware of deaths in police custody. "

I do know of somebody who died in police custody in London. The police were little more than the kind of roudy thugs you see on the street corners drinking beer before going out on the pull. They didn't much care about my freind and it was very obvious that this was because my freind was not only black, but poor too.

You see, in the eyes of all police officers, policing follows the individual they are dealing with. So somebody that has clean clothes on, while using an expensive looking phone, perhaps reading a copy of the Times receives the best possible service from the police. Somebody who is black and wearing poor clothing can expect to be arrested for no other reason than the police know that that person is never going to be able to afford a good lawyer. So that person will receive the worst possible service.

My freind died while 5 police officers stood by mutually convincing each other that my freind was just putting it on.

Only when my freind stopped breathing did they once again become police officers and only then did they try to give aid.

My freind did not recover and his life was not saved. None of the police officers ever faced justice for what was always carefully crafted neglect based on the colour of my freinds skin and the cheap state of his clothes.

You can apologise all you want for the police, but I'm afraid that it just doesn't mean anything.

It never does!

I think we should be asking why not one single police officer has ever been convicted of killing a person. Teresa May states that whole life tariffs should be aplied to people who kill police officers, but not once admits that the police cause a threat to members of the community. Undoubtedly, police officers do find themselves in dangerous situations as part of their job, but does this warrant a different form of justice because of their work? May is just playing populist politics with the criminal justice system and that never serves the purpose of justice.

Post after post critical of the police but no suggestions of what should reaplce them. Anarchists are always quick to tell the rest of us what they don't like but have no suggestions for what would be better.

"Post after post critical of the police but no suggestions of what should reaplce them. Anarchists are always quick to tell the rest of us what they don't like but have no suggestions for what would be better."

This reminds of the damoclian argument for getting rid of anti-socials from political life. It goes like this...

"The village is full of vandals who spray the whole place with grafitti so we must get rid of them...but the problem is if we get rid of the vandals, who is going to do all the grafitti?"

The question contains within it, its own answer.

In a police-centric society like ours, criminals benefit most from the existance of the police, and visa versa.

Lawful communities have nothing to hide, and therefore nothing to fear.

No, once it accelerates the abolition of the police for only one nanosecond it is justified.