Mammale,
You said,
“000646: The police officer said he DID NOT have a taser in his car.”
Well that would be incompetence or irresponsible.
The point is that it is really hard for me to believe that a Police officer acting in a correct and thought out manner would really be in a position where an unarmed person would kill him if the officer didn’t use lethal force. Why did he get out of the car himself? Couldn’t he have waited for backup? Did he mace the kid, hit him with a club when he charged? Why couldn’t he shoot the kid in the legs, or somewhere besides the head?
I’m not saying that I think that the officer should be put on trial for first degree murder but him and his department definitely carry some responsibility. I can’t believe that this HAD to happen the way it did.
The excuse “whoops bad call I was under pressure” does not cut it when your job is to be trained to deal with these types of situations and react correctly without panicking and your failure to do so results in a death. It just doesn’t. (The job the police are given is NOT to react that way! Anyone can go around confronting people who they think are doing something wrong and then shooting them in the head when they get into a fight with them. The reason we have police is specifically to avoid those kinds of situations)
Denying this is in my opinion counterproductive and silly.