Cops are supposed to be the protectors.

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

qft

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.  

Galaki said: Lafiel said: I wonder if it was a black remote, as I can't imagine somebody would mistake a white one for a weapon even for a fraction of a second, although there probably are some white guns out there. The resemblance is uncanny.

Well, it isn't, but if you expect the other person to be armed, then for a brief moment you might believe the person actually carries a gun, if he/she is holding a black object (and hence trigger the reaction). I doubt a white object has the same effect, although (as I said) there might very well be white guns out there.

Tragic, very much so.

To be totally honest, we don't know anything about the exact circumstances, it's a given that it all happened in the blink of an eye. The kid's father apparently was on probation, we don't know but that man could've been a serious criminal. The officer likely didn't immediately recognize him as a kid either, because in the OP's pic he looks like an adult to me, probably moreso if the pic's old - therefore she likely presumed the guy opening the door was the father (a known offender). Then, of course, for all we know the kid could've been holding this:

Of course it's very wrong what she did, and I'm not defending her, just pointing out that we know very little about the circumstances.

No doubt in my mind that it's a really old pic used in the OP.  I'm sure the kid was 100% innocent and I wish he were alive today but the media does this thing where they attempt to manipulate by using specific pictures to outrage the community. 

what happened to the NRA argument that if you put a gun in a good guys hands (like a cop or teacher) a weapon becomes protection from the evil people. it is so mindblowing that a supposedly well developed country cant see that legalised weapons cause so much harm and fear in the population. dont get me wrong. the US has done some amazing achievements during its lifetime, but in two ways it just seems so medieval that it holds back society and causes suffering to the people. the other would be the overly religious belief. in any other parts of the world except north korea and some middle eastern Muslim groups, the inhumanity religion opposes upon certain groups of people is simply unheard of.it has some of the same methods used by nazi's during the war. pick a segment of the population and deem them the devil itself. then use all your efforts to convince the population of it.

charge her with first degree murder.

I am sure there're are plenty of ways to punish her more; years in prison, lashing, hanging, beatings, waterboarding.

I just looked up the numbers for germany
in the year 2012 8 people where killed with guns shot by policemen and 104 shots fired at people. of those shots 54 were warnings , 14 at objects and 36 directly at people
another 10249 shots were fired at animals and objects

I'm actually baffled how low that number is but I think that numbers are only for the "normal" police