Warning to cops. In a tense situation you block your reasoning powers. Your survival instincts dominate. Can you let just a little bit of your rational nature peek through? Can you, for just a brief moment, become aware of the situation as it really is, and not as your adrenaline-overloaded brain makes it out to be?
The problem in this case is the idiot who called the police and said that the kid had a gun. What the hell is wrong with that person? It saw a metallic object in the kid’s hands and thought “gun”?
Some individuals have such an inordinate fear of guns that they see guns where there are none.
So the obvious solution is to shoot the black guy laying there with his hands up. Got it.
But I though that was why all the intense training. I can understand a cop being under massive stress, but if he has been taught “off target, off trigger”, then he should not be able to squeeze the trigger under stress. Say he screws up that one, and neglegently has his finger on the trigger, and stress causes an accidental shot to fire — if his training tapught him good muzzle discipline, then the bullrtveould not have hit anyone.
So under extreme stress, the officer had to violate not just ONE, but at least TWO rules of safe gun handling. That sounds like poor training to me. But if he received good training and just ignored it, then he is not fit to be a street cop with a gun. Stick him behind a desk.
No, the cop is the idiot.