If you're a feeling person, you are indeed saddened by the cop's death, whether he made a mistake at the scene or not.
If you're a feeling person, you might even feel bad for the guy who snapped and drove the plough into the cop. It wasn't his life that was taken, but his life as he knew it is over. He was, apparently, a combination of depressed, distraught and possibly mentally ill. Certainly he must feel enormous regret.
If you're a feeling person, you try to treat all people's lives as valuable as your own, so you might be baffled how little attention is given to victims of the police, but just how much is given to the police as victims. Is it right? Is it proportional? No it is not.
But can you fault police for supporting each other? Probably not.
Should the media treat the dead officer as a saint, a hero? No, he was just doing his job, one that is by turns dangerous, boring and stressful. The incidence of police death on the job is very low, but that doesn't stop the police union and policeman from using it to their political advantage every chance they get. So where does the politics begin and end?
The police in Toronto have a very serious problem, one that has been building for some time, and so it is quite "natural" that there's all this negative energy at what should be a sacred time. It's just been waiting to be released. Is there a good time for such uncomfortable talk? Nope. It doesn't make it any easier than ANY criticism of the police, is always met with the same two deflections:
1) We put our life on the line for you, so shut up--always.
and
2) Wait until you need us, and then you'll change your mind.
It shuts up 95% of people, and allows the police to continue to operate almost outside of the reach of the law or any reasonable, democratic oversight.
The larger problem is that police always stand together, and do not allow dissent, so it's difficult to have a conversation between the police and the public under these circumstances.
I think decent people feel that Russell should be celebrated, but that it's also not surprising that many well intentioned people wonder whether there aren't a lot of issues on the table beyond the simple drama that played out that day. It is the result of them not being dealt with at other times, and the way in which the police refuse to answer questions about their own--ever.
Eventually, inconveniently, these questions need to come to light. Apparently the time is now, whether anyone likes it or not.
RIP to Russell and sympathies to his wife and family.