Another incident has claimed the lives of officers trying to make an arrest. The AP reports two deputies were killed:

Spooner said the deputies had no information to make them think Cartwright would turn his weapons on them.

“This went from zero to 100 in a matter of minutes. In three minutes it turned from a passive discussion to a shooting, it was one heck of a mess,” the sheriff said.

This suggests the officers did not recognize the threat of an armed and dangerous individual, although they confronted him after a domestic abuse charge at a gun range. I do not want to second guess the event, or claim to know probabilities, but anger management issues and gun proficiency seem like information that might help the deputies know someone might turn weapons on them.

According to a domestic violence report, Cartwright’s wife, Elizabeth Marie Cartwright, 21, told deputies after her husband died that he believed the government was conspiring against him and that he had been upset by Barack Obama’s election.

Authorities said the National Guard solider was interested in militias and in weapons training.

Both deputies were shot in areas not protected by their bulletproof vests, Spooner said.

It seems obvious that a soldier would be interested in weapons training and know how to shoot to kill, but it is hard to translate this into a high risk profile without other data. The comment about militias and the president is different. I mean you are not just talking about a man trained to kill, but someone with motive. It should raise the risk level (as well as the usual uncomfortable questions about individual freedom of speech and the profile of dissent versus domestic terrorism). The key question is whether the threat could have been identified before an arrest was attempted, and then whether it could have helped prevent the deaths. Another way of looking at it does not even include the suspect’s political leanings. A prior arrest for battery and reports of violence at the workplace also probably should have helped prepare the officers.

In the chase that followed, Cartwright’s truck flipped on its side after spikes at a roadblock punctured the tires. The soldier came out shooting, Spooner said.

Investigators say Cartwright and deputies at the roadblock exchanged about 60 rounds in 30 to 40 seconds before he was killed.

The suspect appears to have been heavily armed with automatic and concealed weapons and ready for a confrontation with police. It does not seem as though they were as equally prepared. In related news from a different perspective a confrontation in Turkey with a left-wing militant also left several people dead even after extensive preparations.

A suspected left-wing extremist is among three people killed Monday during a six-hour shootout at an Istanbul apartment, Turkey’s interior minister said as security forces clamp down on extremists across the country. One police officer and a passer-by also died in the shooting. Six policemen and a television cameraman were wounded, Besir Atalay said.