New York Times gift articles

Like WTF is wrong with your country that you allow your police force to just fire off their weapons in public like that?

If I were to just guess to the reason(s) US law enforcement is so inept, I'd say training and recruiting are a huge part.

Training: There's apparently no universal training requirements for law enforcement officers. Many organizations and/or states have their own requirements, but there's also situations where that is not the case.

The following is purely anecdotal, so make of it what you want. I'm sure it's not universally applicable. In my social circles I have a few police officers, and one of them told me of an exchange program, where he had gone to somewhere in the south east of the US. On a ride along with a deputy, they talked about training prior to patrol duty. Said deputy claimed that they had had no prior training, but was hired on the basis of a high school diploma, a drivers license, and no history of drugs or criminal behavior. First day on the force the deputy had been equipped with uniform, badge, gun, and a patrol car, and a couple of hours later had been driving about town, uniformed, armed, and extreheeemely nervous. Training hadn't begun until 6 months later, and in the meantime that deputy had been driving around, scared of getting flagged down by civilians, because he/she had no idea of what to do.

What kind of system allows you to drive around armed with both a gun and qualified immunity? (rhetorical question, we know what kind)

In the recruiting part: Turning down applicants for having an above average IQ https://abcnews.go.com/amp/US/court-oks-barring-high-iqs-cops/story?id=95836 does seem weird, unless you want mindless drones carrying out orders without reflection.