And cops get mad at me when I make jokes about their intelligence when stories like this exist.

At best, I can imagine that it was a swat team raid where they kicked the door down and the officers had already been alerted that the suspect may have a gun. However, I don't see any of that in the story so.... This is pretty bad...

Also, this is why I would never EVER buy a gun for self defense. You are WAY more likely to shoot an innocent than you are to shoot a criminal.

Worse yet, I can imagine myself making this exact same mistake. Im somewhat absent minded, so I am terrified of this kind of situation.

even people that buy a gun for self defense never would act so lightly,  theres always a long back and forth in ordinary gun murder

i think its the mentality of Terminator and the fear that somehow these cops have of being attacked, i dont honestly really know how off real it is, but they look  fearfull most times, and thats really bad for a cop

plus even if it sounds rude, i prefer to see a murdered cop with honor that died protecting lives that this kind of BS "...the officer felt threatened and pulled the trigger prematurely on a kid..."

i put the life of a kid before the life of a cop. sorry but it goes with the job. if you dont like it resign, youre not made for it, and you are probably gonna cause more harm than good like this poor officer

bolded: fixed.

This sums up the situation pretty well.

It would not be unreasonable to claim that she is not fit for duty, but further punishing her would serve no purpose.

Tragic, and I'm sure not intentional, but Police (like citizens) are not supposed to shoot someone unless it is their one and only option. She should be held accountable.  

Sidenote:  Also would like to hear the full story.  Sometimes things like this get reported and they leave out the fact that the guy screamed "I'm going to f'ing kill you" and pretended it was a gun or covered it partially because he is unstable or something like that.  Not saying that happened here but press likes to leave important details like that out a lot to sensationalize.  Especially in American media.  World famous for doing that.

You have no clue how stupid most of the people who own guns are...  The amount of innocent people dying from friendly fire incidents far outweighs the number of legitamate killings.  This incident isn't shocking in the least.  It happens all the time.  The official statistic is that guns are 43 times more likely to kill a family member than someone in self defense.  This number was researched by the NRA, at which point they killed off all research into gun violence.  

Take Tylenol as another example, more people kill themselves overdosing on Tylenol than any other drug.  People for some idiotic reason don't seem to realize the dosage limit is on their for a reason.  You are able to go over the dose written on the side of the container because tylenol is in all kinda of over the counter drugs so they try to account for that, but people just down a bottle without thinking.

"Only two things are infinite, the universe and human stupidity....and im not sure about the first one."

For those saying that the officer should have shot him in the arm or leg the police in every country are trained to shoot in the middle of the chest for two reasons: 1) It's the largest area of the human body so easier to hit 2) The chances of a fatal shot are higher.

If the police didn't do this you'd have A LOT more officers killed on duty.

Of course tragedies are going to happen every now and then but I feel a great deal safer knowing the police don't fuck about.

don't fuck about .. more like fuck up on a regular basis