It IS a dangerous job and with all the police shootings lately, I don't blame them for being on edge, but they are trained. If you are trained you are supposed to react correctly in those situations, not panic. Why not shoot him in the kneecap? That would have dropped him. Where are the tasers? What about bear spray? I understand they don't want to get real close to someone wielding a knife but I am thinking of how the FBI and CIA are trained to react and wondering why it isn't the same for cops. If they can't handle it, they shouldn't be doing the job. And this keeps happening and they keep saying they are going to do "training."

They say they tried to Tase the guy. They will never shoot for anything other than the torso.

There are police training videos of real incidents where a police officer is attacked by a perp with a knife.
The officer empties his gun into the assailant and he keeps coming, brutally stabbing the officer to death.

That's the reality of what can happen and why officer act with what is hopefully over powering force. They want to live.

What the news media refuses to report is the number of suicides that are occurring daily. We only learn of the occasional bridge jumper that drew some public attention and those who choose to have a Police officer provide the service.

No Ben, the reality is that is how they are trained. To be hyper paranoid, to react with emptying their side arm at the slightest perceived threat. If we look at all the Cops being killed in the last couple of weeks, none of them relate to the No thinking, paranoid gun emptying reacting trained into them by video enactments.

Look at the patterns. Look at the training. We are not saving cops lives, we are assassinating the impaired and mentally ill. Thuggish cops have resulted in the criminals now shooting them down. The reaction of law enforcement is us versus them and the mentally ill, homeless and other impaired are being shot down like dogs.

To say that the police empty their side arm at the slightest perceived threat is just inane.

I'd like to see you go through some of the simulations police are trained with. A guy charges with a knife - that is absolutely a situation where lethal force is called for. I don't care if he was drunk. mentally ill, or whatever. The cop's life is at risk and he or she has the responsibility to end the threat.

Calling iut an assassination is just juvenile.

"Ben is correct."
I have been involved in police training.
At street and management level.
Step back and look at the whole situation. Read the related story. If you need me to be at your juvenile level, maybe you can understand this training video:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vTBskrO9nV8

Becoming a cop doesn't mean you should engage in hand-to-hand combat with drunk/deranged guys with knives. At the end of the day, being a cop is just a job. No job is worth dying for, especially in a town where hating cops seems to be in style.

There's that real constructive PPB attitude. Perhaps the hatred is not such a mystery.

I was reading about a different case in Michigan where a guy was "resisting" and was basically assaulted for asking (rudely, I'll grant) two officers to leave his home. The officer had a recording device on, and it really contradicts the offi

(Posting with Iphone stinks)
It really contradicted the arresting officer's report.

How about some these guys getting complaints levied against them need a video or audio recording of how they do things.

They'll behave, the PPB can train from it, and maybe a few sad sick people get treatment instead of a funeral and a lawsuit.

Google "Tueller Drill".

Knives are scary bad stuff.

As for why 12 shots?

Four things to consider:

1) Adrenaline.

2) Center of Mass *moves around less* and is *bigger* than other potentially non-incapacitating targets.

3) Just because someone is wounded, perhaps fatally, doesn't mean they immediately fall over and get all peaceful. Many cases have been recorded of seriously, or even fatally, wounded individuals continuing to wreak mayhem for some time before finally weakening to a point where they cease violence.

4) The fatality or seriousness of a gunshot wound is *not* necessarily immediately apparent. Particularly to someone busy about fighting for their life.

I do not comment on whether this individual incident was justified or not.

I do suggest that the mental health or lack thereof of "man with a knife" moving forward in a hostile/aggressive fashion is simply not a relevant factor when one does not wish to become perforated.