Raccoons don't like rotten road kill lol. That's for the Coyote and Mountain Lions. Baby raccoons are prey for raptors such as owls, eagles, cats, dogs, snakes, coyotes, wolves, mountain lions, badgers. I don't see anything wrong with leaving a little food out once in awhile.
The raccoons out west have no rabies and de-worming them is as easy as deworming a dog. You can get a dewormer at the local feed store. I see no reason to trap and destroy them. It makes sense to me to trap them and release them somewhere else.
All raccoons picked up by animal control or police are killed and checked for rabies. The rabies check required cutting their head off to test the brain stem. Euthanizing them might taint the test results so they have to be killed without chemicals when possible. That's likely why the raccoon was shot point blank aside from the fact the officers probably didn't want to get bitten. Trapping any raccoon and turning it over to animal control is a brutal death sentence for the raccoon. I don't think anyone should do it unless the raccoon is a very real threat.
Being a nuisance like digging in the trash or trying to get through a door , in my opinion, is not reason to kill them.
Raccoons didn't used to be rabies ridden on the east coast. What happened was that so many raccoons were being hunted and killed the populations on the northern east coast started to disappear so the environmentalists trapped some raccoons from a pack in Florida that happened to have rabies and released them up North. They quickly exposed the rabies to some of the Northern families. That's why no more raccoons will be trapped and released.
Sadly the Nationwide raccoon populations would be better off if the populations on the east coast were eradicated completely to end the rabies problem created by man.... before they slowly spread across the nation. But how do you do that? I think they are trying ... by killing any they can get their hands on.
Obviously baby raccoons are not infected because the parents would have died had they been rabid. A rabid raccoon cannot think clearly enough to take care of it's young and will kill its own kittens. If you see baby raccoons romping and playing... or acting normal they are not likely infected.
