Quote (Spinne @ Jun 14 2020 03:32am)
Is that usual training in the US? I'm unfamiliar with the procedure over there. here in Germany they get trained to first try to shoot in nonlethal areas if the attacker has weapons like a stun gun or a knife
(If they have a gun they will also aim for deadly parts of course)
The training is to aim center of mass and fire until the target is down, never to aim for extremities.
Aiming off the center means you're far more likely to miss, which could hit bystanders and fail to neutralize the threat. Its also why they use hollow point bullets, which are far more deadly against unarmored targets but less likely to penetrate and hit bystanders. The training is that any time you're shooting a gun your goal is to kill someone, its a lethal weapon, it doesn't have non-lethal intended uses. If lethal force is justified to stop someone, then you should be trying to down that target immediately, not risking other peoples lives with concern over whether you could just wing him. If the target isn't a threat, then you shouldn't be shooting him at all.
This guy already already attacked officers and grappled with them and punched them, grabbed at their guns, ripped a taser out of their hands and then turned around and fired it at them while running. For people to criticize whether he technically represented a lethal threat at that point 'because its only a taser' is the worst kind of armchair quarterbacking. The police were already in a very violent struggle and the guy just stole a weapon and shot at them, in that split second they don't get to carefully weigh the possible outcomes. They don't get to think about 'well he could taser a cop, and when hes down, try to grab his gun, and
then he'd be a lethal threat and they could shoot him' like some on twitter have been saying. Once someone has escalated from physically assaulting officers to stealing weapons to shooting at cops, their violent hostility is abundantly clear and they pose an imminent threat.