Quote:I understand those that take the self defense side. I also understand the calls for better training and more restraint. It's a difficult situation one which is not as black and white as both sides make it seem. Way to many people get happy when a cop kills a criminal and way to many assume the incidents are all murder. 

It's not murder if the attacker has a knife, gun, baseball bat or any other form of weapon that can reasonably be considered lethal (i.e., no shooting a guy over a Swiss Army Knife). If there was another officer on scene after the perp stole the plainclothes officer's gun, that other officer would absolutely have been justified in aiming right between the eyes.

 

It is murder if the cop has no reasonable suspicion that the attacker is armed. A guy who runs up to a cop brandishing an airsoft gun that looks like the real thing, barely noticeable red ring or not, is armed as far as I'm concerned, and I know many people who would disagree with that and expect the officer to waste critical seconds looking to see if the perp's gun has a red ring around the barrel or not. In this case, there's been nothing said or reported to suggest that the officer would have had any reason to believe that the perp was armed with anything more than his bare fists, and imo, packing heat in a fist fight is murder. That's why I applaud the officer's decision not to shoot, even though it resulted in his taking a beating.

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