This is an archived article that was published on sltrib.com in 2014, and information in the article may be outdated. It is provided only for personal research purposes and may not be reprinted.

After watching video of the Salt Lake City police officer shooting Dillon Taylor, the impact is immediate: volatile, emotional, upsetting. Officer Bron Cruz' voice is shaky, scared and adrenalin-filled as he orders a retreating Taylor to stop and raise his hands. There is no indication that Cruz is anything other than a responsible officer in a situation fraught with potential danger.

Some of my favorite people, including family and friends, are officers. I think of them in a similar situation and want them to act proactively to protect themselves.

It is mere seconds before Taylor still moving backward, turns, his hands buried in his pants, and pulling his hands out, is shot.

Knowing the video is the last moment family and friends will see this young man alive is traumatizing. It must be devastating for Taylor's loved ones. Particularly as it is entirely possible that Taylor was wearing headphones and didn't hear the officer's commands. If so, from what we see he may not have violated any law. And he was unarmed.

Some of my favorite people, including family and friends, are just like Dillon. I think of them in a similar situation, and I cringe, hoping and praying that they respond to an officer's commands quickly and carefully, and thereby, live.

In a previous column, I blithely asserted that because we as a community imbue officers with the responsibility to assure public safety and give them the authority to use reasonable force while doing so, we are responsible to assure that this awesome authority is used appropriately.

A more considered statement is that as a community we do not live up to the responsibility. Let me be more personally honest. I am deeply involved in the justice system, and I have personally not lived up to my responsibility.

This could have happened to anyone. If it had been my tatted-up nephew Joshua — a friend of Dillon's, or my teen son Justis, or more likely, my verbal, oppositional (and delightful) daughter Analise who was shot, I would be involved. If it had been my UPD cousin Jason or my SLCPD friend Lonnie who shot someone, I would be involved.

Many public-policy issues are never addressed because they are inherently difficult, and we are apparently ill-equipped in a modern age to tackle them.

What makes examining officers' use of force against civilians difficult? The list is long: there are more than 17,000 police jurisdictions in this country; 137 agencies in Utah alone. Each police agency has its own policies, training, and culture and is essentially autonomous, reporting to and responsible only to its sponsoring government entity. So unless there is a national response, imposing vigorous oversight over police agencies must be accomplished in 17,000 jurisdictions.

There are no universally accepted standards and training addressing the use of force and deadly force by officers. If there is anything we've learned, it is that we know little about how officers are trained and whether the standards which guide them reflect our values.

There are variations in the support for training. We might expect that large departments have standardized and professional training as they have more resources and oversight, yet most police agencies are small.

The review of officers' use of force and deadly force is usually conducted by agencies and individuals who work closely with law enforcement, and often by the agencies themselves. As in the Taylor case, the review can be vigorous and public. Or it can be perfunctory. And we must remind ourselves that the review rests on standards and training that are little understood and may not reflect our values.

These issues, and more, complicate our consideration. Yet our failure as citizens is deeper because in the area of police use of force and deadly force, we don't even know what is happening. We don't know how often civilians are shot and/or killed; we don't know where the shootings occurred; and we don't know the circumstances, what happened, in each shooting. This is unacceptable.

The statistics and analysis simply do not exist. The best guess is that more than 1,000 civilians are killed each year.

This is the price of not knowing our neighbors, the officers who serve us, and the politicians who supervise them. This is the price of being disengaged as a citizen.

My prayers are with Dillon and Bron and their people. This could have happened to anyone, and we don't know enough to speak to whether it might have been avoided.

Henri Sisneros is a Salt Lake City attorney and former assistant U.S. attorney and assistant federal defender.