Is anger the problem with violent police officers these days?

It’s been another bad week for police officer/citizen interactions in the United States of America.

On Wednesday, as most of our readers know all too well by now, city leaders in North Charleston, S.C., were busy trying to calm racial tensions after the shooting death of an unarmed black man by a white police officer, which was captured on video, sparked protests and led to murder charges against the policeman.

While the demonstrations in North Charleston were mostly peaceful, an understandable rage simmered just below the surface as some citizens complained that were it not for the cellphone footage shot by a passerby, concern about excessive police force might have been treated very differently by authorities, and unfortunately, they are probably right.

South Carolina police officer Michael Slager was charged with murder after the video came to light of him shooting at a black man, Walter Scott, eight times as he ran away from the officer last Saturday.

“Without the video he’d be just another black man dead,” said Jeremy Johnson, 21, a fast-food worker who said he wanted to keep pressure on officials to clamp down on police brutality and draw attention to the death of Scott.

North Charleston Mayor Keith Summey said in a news conference that Slager had been fired a day after he was charged with murder in the shooting of Scott following a routine traffic stop over a broken brake light.

According to reports, the shooting in the industrial city of 104,000 people, where 47 percent of the population is black, unfolded in an empty lot the size of a city block.

The 50-year-old Scott had been pulled over in his Mercedes on Saturday morning along a busy stretch of strip malls, drugstores and auto shops. He ran across a side street and into the overgrown lot, which is partially shielded by trees, where his confrontation with Slager culminated in shots being fired into his back.

Justin Bamberg, a lawyer for the Scott family, said Scott might have run away from the officer because he owed child support and had been arrested in the past for lack of payment.

“I don’t think he wanted to go back to jail,” Bamberg said.

In yet another incident that may not be as well known to our readers, a news video in Hesperia, Calif., on Thursday captured sheriff’s deputies tracking down a white man fleeing on horseback and then punching and kicking him dozens of times after he falls to the ground.

As was the case with the South Carolina incident, “The video surrounding this arrest is disturbing,” San Bernardino County Sheriff-Coroner John McMahon said.

A sheriff’s statement said Francis Pusok, 30, fled from deputies early in the afternoon as they tried to serve a search warrant in an identity-theft investigation. He eventually abandoned a car in the Hesperia area and stole a horse, but was tracked down by deputies.

KNBC-TV helicopter footage shows the man dressed in bright red clothing falling from the horse as a deputy runs up and uses a stun gun on him. The man falls face-down with his arms and legs outstretched. The video shows two deputies appearing to come up and kick him in the head and crotch as he puts his hands behind his back as they continue to pound him. Other deputies arrive moments later.

KNBC-TV said up to 13 deputies eventually surrounded the man, and some of them kicked, hit and punched him dozens of times over a two-minute period.

“It doesn’t look good. It looks like his hands are behind his back even when they’re doing the blows,” said Ken Cooper, a use of force expert. “The justification for using force is to gain compliance from the suspect, and the suspect seems to be complying. So what this looks like is those blows are not justified, they’re not necessary and they’re not professional.” Pusok’s attorney said to him the video showed “thugs beating up my client.”

We agree that it doesn’t “look good” … neither does the Scott case from South Carolina, and both instances leave us asking once again – what is going on with some of the police officers in our country?’

Having posed that question, allow us to right away state that we have nothing but respect for our police officers. We are keenly aware of the fact that they face potentially life-threatening situations every day and have nothing but appreciation and admiration for the job they do as they endeavor to keep the rest of us safe.

We can even understand how dealing with an unruly, threatening detainee or being forced to chase a suspect for long distances could spark feelings of frustration, or even anger, but no matter what they do … no matter what they say … you don’t shoot someone in the back. You don’t savagely kick and beat a man after he is down.

Walter Scott was black, and Francis Pusok is white, and for that reason we are inclined to believe that

anger issues, and not race, are the primary causes of most of these and other instances of brutality.

So what’s the answer? We don’t know. We are fairly certain that potential police officers undergo some form of psychological testing before being sent out with authority and arms, but perhaps that testing should be enhanced or made more stringent in an effort to weed out any rogue officers who might feel as though they are above the law they are sworn to uphold.

We need police officers whose mission it is to protect and serve the citizenry, not to inflict unnecessary harm or degrade them.