Such outings were rarely tranquil, and often led to shootings between the Wave Gang and their rivals, the Hood Starz.
The aggressive measures used by private contractors eventually led to shootings in Afghanistan and Iraq that provoked protests, including an episode involving guards from an American security company, Blackwater, that left at least 17 Iraqis dead in Baghdad's Nisour Square.
With little funding for schools, businesses and social services, many local kids suffer from a lack of opportunity, which serves as a pipeline into the sorts of criminal activity that often leads to shootings.
In the department's standard review of events that lead to police shootings, it can be challenging to evaluate cases in which an officer kills someone wielding an everyday object that is not typically considered lethal.
"We know what situations lead to police shootings," he says.
In addition, some readers cite other cultural factors in the U.S. that may lead to mass shootings, and a scant few say this massacre is an argument against increased gun control.
Voters who backed Hillary Clinton in 2016 were 60 points likelier than Donald Trump voters to think stricter gun laws would lead to fewer shootings, and 50 points likelier to see gun violence as very serious.
One study, published last October by a team from Johns Hopkins University, concluded that increasing the number of weapons on college grounds is "likely to lead to more shootings, homicides, and suicides on campus, especially among students".
That racial bias, as much as the perceived disdain for authority by citizens, was bound to lead to officer-involved shootings such as the controversial killing of 18-year-old Michael Brown on Ferguson's streets.
Forty-six percent of Americans in a recent HuffPost/YouGov survey said that stricter gun control laws and enforcements were most likely to lead to fewer mass shootings, while only 34percentt said that allowing more private citizens to carry guns for protection would be the more protective measure.
