Your proposed ducking, running, dropping to the ground, etc doesn’t apply here, that was not an option for the two officers. In any event, such action is foolish where you and the assailant are both armed and in close quarters. Unless, of course you can move faster than a bullet.
Based on what we know from the article, clearly Zerby was not a “poor guy with a garden hose”. In this instance, the first shooter most certainly was attempting to save the life of a fellow officer. The fact Zerby was intoxicated doesn’t operate as a defense any more than it does for a drunk driver that wipes out a family in a head-on collision.
The flip side of this story is that of a relatively new officer with a wife and two young childen who was shot down because he was indecisive and someone got the drop on him.
There was a recent case in Southern California, where a neighbor reported her neighbor with a gun in his front fenced yard. Officers responded, hiding behind the fence, and shot him dead. He was watering his front yard with a pistol grip type water hose. Those officers gave no warning. I’m just reading too many reports of cops automatically shooting to kill, and asking questions after an innocent person is dead. Part of the risk of being an officer is to use diligence in responding. That diligence extends to determining if a person is indeed a credible threat. Too often, cops are trigger happy and not using common sense. I would hope that if my child had a ballpoint pen, water gun, pop tart eaten in the shape of a gun, or other non-lethal implement that a cop would excercise common sense. I worked with cops a couple decades, the older ones were more diligent than the new ones now.