Kid shot by police, allegedly holding Wiimote

[d21lewis]

Galaki said:

d21lewis said:
I was a cop and we took a course on "judgmental pistol shooting". All sorts of scenarios were presented and you only had a split second to decide if you were going to shoot or die. It was all done via simulation. So many times, I died because I chose not to shoot when I should have and so many times I shot when I probably shouldn't have. It's easy to play Monday morning quarterback and say what she should have done but from experience, it's a tough spot to be in. My heart goes out to the victim and the officer. Gonna be hard to live with that one.

Cops are supposed to be the protectors.

If I were a cop, I'd rather be shot dead than to shoot an innocent dead.

Yeah.  Unfortunately, you have like two seconds to determine the innocent from the killers.  You wouldn't be much of a protector if you can't even protect yourself.  The world a lot of people live in is not the world a police officer lives in.  I've lived in my town pretty much my whole life.  It's not even that big of a place.  When I became a cop, I got to see people at their worst on a daily basis.  Nobody wants to kill anybody--guilty or innocent.  The last thing a cop wants to do is pull the trigger.  The next to the last thing they want to do (or at least in my case) was make an arrest when the problem could possibly be solved otherwise.

She went there to serve a warrant, according to the OP.  This was a female attempting to bring a male into custody and females often have a harder time because they are sometimes physically outmatched.  A guy would be quicker to resist a female officer than they would be to resist me.