A couple of miles from my home is a road-side memorial for a police officer who was shot to death during a routine traffic stop. His death was attributed to insufficient caution in approaching the vehicle. Sufficient caution may be best illustrated by my recent experience in getting a traffic ticket for a "rolling stop".

I was a little heated over a "discussion" with my son. When I saw the lights, I may have gesticulated my annoyance. I pulled into a parking lot of a local autoparts store and waited, and waited, and waited. Only after another police cruiser appeared did the officer exit his vehicle to ask me for my license and registration. The whole time, the second officer was standing up behind his car door, with his hand on his weapon.

All this, because the officer perceived me to be agitated. The officer acted to preserve his own safety, but in doing so, he put me and my family at the risk of being shot and killed.

Think I'm kidding?

At around 4 a.m. Saturday morning two undercover officers called for back-up after witnessing a dispute outside the club among a group of men, including Bell. Police say Bell then got into his car with his friends and rammed into the undercover police officer who was following them, as well as an unmarked police van. Police say that's when five officers fired at least 50 bullets into Bell's car and killed him. It's unclear whether the officers identified themselves.

It occurs to me that our soldiers in Iraq and our police share a similar dynamic--an unseen threat produces a predictable reaction--armor up.

Simply put, the police culture in our country has changed. An emphasis on "officer safety" and paramilitary training pervades today's policing, in contrast to the older culture, which held that cops didn't shoot until they were about to be shot or stabbed. Police in large cities formerly carried revolvers holding six .38-caliber rounds. Nowadays, police carry semi-automatic pistols with 16 high-caliber rounds, shotguns and military assault rifles, weapons once relegated to SWAT teams facing extraordinary circumstances. Concern about such firepower in densely populated areas hitting innocent citizens has given way to an attitude that the police are fighting a war against drugs and crime and must be heavily armed.

Everytime I encounter the police, I am keenly aware of the risk of being shot and I do everything possible to allay the officer's fear of me--seems odd doesn't it--I have to allay the officer's fears and he (or she) is the one with the hand on the butt of his gun.

The response to IEDs or drug dealers with high-powered ordnance is completely rational, but its social effect is devastating.

What do Iraqis think when they see a coalition patrol coming through their neighborhood? I don't know if the current insurgent tactics are part of a strategy to alienate the Iraqi people and coalition forces, but that is precisely what it accomplished--when everyone could be the enemy, then you treat everyone as the enemy--not exact a recipe for amicable community relations.

American police forces, by use of paramilitary tactics, accomplish the same outcome--the perception that they are an "occupying army"--the object of more fear than the criminals they are ostensibly there to protect us from.

The "obvious" solution is to make the police (or our soldiers) invulnerable to harm. A perfectly secure police force can also be a magnanimous one. Until that time, we may have to contemplate that crime has a far greater social cost than we may have realized.