In most professions, if you completely screw up your job so badly that you end up almost killing someone, that is grounds for termination. But not in the world of law enforcement. No, in the world of law enforcement, screwing up and almost killing innocent people is grounds for a medal. The indispensible Radley Balko has the scoop:

Last December, I posted about a botched SWAT raid on an innocent Minnesota family. Acting on bad information from an informant, the police threw flash grenades though the family’s windows, then exchanged gunfire with Vang Khang, who mistook the police for criminal intruders. Seven months later, no one in the police department has been held accountable for the mistakes leading up to the raid.

However, this week Minneapolis Police Chief Tim Dolan and Mayor R.T. Rybak did give the raiding officers medals and commendations for their bravery in nearly killing Vang Khang, his wife, and their six children.

Read the whole thing for more, especially the part about how this is not the first time this has happened.

This is, plain and simple, an outrage. Not only should the officers have been investigated for this incident (which they haven’t been), the idea that they should be commended for it shows a profound disconnect between police and their communities. What’s worse is that it provides perverse incentives. What’s the point in being an honest, decent cop if it’s botching the job horribly that gets you the medal?

Police officers have a rough job, and the vast majority of them do their jobs while still trying to be decent human beings. But they’re not gods. When the system is set up so that mistakes are rewarded, and the idea that cops are somehow above or better than the communities they police is promulgated from the top, it takes a lot of strength to buck the trend and do the right thing. We’re better off reforming law enforcement institutions. From the top.