Quote:So if stopping the action involves deadly force (which is justified) you would have a problem with that?  You are saying that the police officer should "take the beating" and hope that the suspect doesn't take the officer's weapon and kill said officer?

I do not consider an individual landing a punch on a police officer to be justifiable use of deadly force if that's what you're getting at. I would also expect that a police officer is able to win a fistfight, or at least stalemate one long enough for the backup he'd already called to arrive.

 

Knocking the aggressor to the ground and holding him at gunpoint is stopping the action. Shooting a man who's thrown a punch at you is murder.

 

I've left tasers and pepper spray out of this conversation because there's no reason to assume that an undercover officer would carry those, but perhaps they should. A couple of taser darts would have dropped this perp quickly and excruciatingly painfully (speaking as someone who has been tased as part of a college project) and ended the situation without injury to the officer, without the officer's gun falling into the wrong hands, and certainly without anyone being murdered. Yes, tasers can kill if used improperly, but they now have safeguards built in to minimize those occurrences. I am all in favor of nonlethal/"less lethal" means of subduing criminals, but there is absolutely no excuse for a trained police officer pulling a gun and murdering someone who has no weapon and has no represented themselves at any point as being armed. If a cop can't take a few punches one on one and subdue the aggressor until backup arrives or stalemate the fight until then, they need to go back to the academy or find a new job.

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