Sean Collier drank whiskey.

Policing is a highly thoughtful job that involves realistic thinking in real-time about hazards and inferential decisions. It ought to be totally unacceptable for any Oklahoma police department to fall short of the standard set by the culture and practices of the Oklahoma Highway Patrol. It is unfair to citizens and noncitizens alike to be put into repeated situations where a person who is unfamiliar with the law is uniformed and enforcing the law. The general disposition of a police officer should be oriented more toward the law than personal safety.

It is not an afterthought to me that some police officers in Oklahoma are, essentially, kids. The way a police hierarchy ought to work is that, if it were staffed with people seeking to do wrong for personal pleasure, the internal checks and leviathan force of collective self-policing within the department would still form a rigid barrier keeping policemen in line with right action. That is a question of leadership. Oklahoma has demonstrated its unwillingness to police its policemen by electing Gentner Drummond in the past. Captain Drummond knows better.

Oklahoma police departments can place a specific and explicit onus upon themselves to hire more veterans and people who hold a four-year degree.