We all know the story by now of James Peters, the Scottsdale cop who killed or helped kill six people in separate incidents over the span of 10 years, and who is being sued now by the ACLU on behalf of the family of one victim, a seemingly mentally-troubled guy named John Loxas who was holding a baby at the time he was shot in the head.

The Scottsdale Police Department decided the killings were justifiable homicide. This is part of a disturbing trend documented by James Alan Fox, a criminologist at Northeastern University. He says that police-instigated “justifiable homicides” have increased by one-third even as the crime rate continues to decrease.

Police advocates caution that while many law enforcers never shoot their weapons in their entire careers, some cops find themselves in more dangerous situations than others. They warn us not to judge Peters without knowing all the facts.

What we do know is that Peters’s last victim was a man who raged at neighbors and was running for president of the USA on Facebook. He had 91 likes last I checked, and some of those were probably posthumous.

We need to understand whether the justifiable-homicide-by-cops uptick targets the mentally ill, who often roam the streets in agitated states. And might these guys be more easily subdued with tranquilizer guns instead of sharpshooter rifles.

If you’re interested in reading more of my story on James Peters, which ran this morning in The Daily Beast, here’s the link.