50 rounds of ammo?

In general, I have a great deal of respect and admiration for police officers. There are not many jobs in the United States where the employee's number one goal for the day is to come home alive. In addition, they face an extremely stressful job in which they often deal with depraved and dangerous people. They need to make life or death decisions in a matter of seconds and may either die or go to prison if they make the wrong decision. In addition to all of that, their ability to do their jobs well becomes compromised when the few bad apples among them act up. Unlike many other people who have greatly stressful jobs, they don't get paid particularly well and work crazy hours.

But, every once in a while something crazy happens that I just can't understand at all. Like last week in New York City, when a group of young men, including a man who was going to be married later that day, were shot with approximately 50 rounds of ammunition by a team of undercover NYC police officers.

Let me repeat that. 50 rounds of ammunition.

Enough firepower to kill 50 individuals.

Used against three men. Unarmed men. Including at least one unarmed black men.

Does anyone see a problem here?

I don't know what happened and won't make assumptions at this point in time. All parties deserve to have their interests protected by a thorough and unbiased investigation.

But, 50 rounds?

It would be one thing if just seven years ago, the same police department hadn't killed another unarmed black man in a hail of gunfire that amounted to 41 rounds of ammunition. In this case, the victims had an average of 18 bullets fired at each person instead of Diallo's 41. That's still not my idea of progress.

Can you imagine any reason why 50 rounds of ammunition would be fired by police at anyone in any part of America who wasn't in the midst of firing back, holding hostages, or storming an airport? Any situation in which the person is unarmed?

I can't imagine it happening in a situation in which the victim is not a person of color.